Fig. L— Page 135, 




NEGROES 



AND 



55 



NEGRO "SLAVERY 



THE FIRST AN INFERIOR RACE: 



THE LATTER ITS NORMAL CONDITIO 1ST. 



J. EL VAN EYRIE, M.D. 



** To our reproach it must be said, that, though for a century and a half we have had under our 
eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of 
natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a 
different race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endow- 
ments both of mind and body." — Thomas Jefferson in his "Notes on Virginia." 



NEW YOEK: 
VAN EVRIE, HORTON & CO., 

162 NASSAU STREET. 

18 6 1. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by 

JOHN H. VAN EVKIE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 

Southern District of New York. 



stereotyped by 
Smith & MoDotjgal, 

82 & 84 Beekman ■ st. 






PREFACE. 

Since the first edition of this work was issued, startling and 
deplorable events have occurred. The great " Anti-Slavery" 
delusion, that originated with European monarchists more than 
fifty years ago, has culminated iu disunion and civil war, as its 
authors always predicted it would. A party strongly imbued 
with the false theories and absurd assumptions of British 
writers and abolition societies, is in possession of the Federal 
Government, which it stands pledged to use to reduce its 
assumptions to practice. It holds that the negro, except in 
color, is a man like themselves, and naturally entitled to the 
same liberty — that to deny him this liberty, is to enslave him 
— that, therefore, Southern society is wrong, and should be 
revolutionized, and it avows it to be its mission to accomplish 
this — to institute a policy that shall finally abolish or destroy 
the supremacy of the white man, and secure " impartial free- 
dom" for negroes ! To this the South replies, that this govern- 
ment was created for white men alone, and their posterity, as de- 
clared in the preamble to the Constitution — that the Supreme 
Court has recently declared the same great truth — that, seiz- 
ing the government by a mere sectional vote, and placing it 
in distinct conflict with the social order of the South, with the 
avowed purpose of penning up its negro population, in order 
to bring about some day the extinction or overthrow of the 
existing condition, is, therefore, an overthrow of the Constitu- 
tion — that the object avowed necessarily involves their future 
destruction, and to save themselves from the wild delusion 
and malignant fanaticism of the North, they are forced, in 



VI PREFACE. 

self-defense, to withdraw from the Union, hitherto, or until 
this hostile and dangerous party entered the field, so beneficial 
to all sections of the country. 

So stands the case between the sections. If the "anti- 
slavery" party was based on truth — if the negro, except in 
color, was a man like ourselves — if social subordination of this 
negro was wrong, and the four millions of these people at the 
South entitled to the same liberty as ourselves — and if the 
men who made this government designed it to include the 
inferior races of this continent, and it were really beneficial 
to equalize and fraternize with these negroes, then, though it 
may be doubted, if using the common government to bring it 
about were proper, the end in view would be so beneficent, 
and such a transcendent act of justice to these assumed slaves, 
that all honest, earnest, and patriotic citizens should promptly 
sustain the party now striving to accomplish it. But, on the 
contrary, if this party is based on a stupendous falsehood — if 
the negro is a different and inferior being, and in his normal 
condition at the South — and if the men who made this govern- 
ment, designed it for white men alone — then the length and 
breadth and width and depth of the " anti-slavery" delusion, 
and the crime of the " anti-slavery" party, which has broken 
up the Union in a blind crusade after negro freedom, will be 
fully comprehended by the American people. The whole 
mighty question, therefore, with all its vast and boundless 
consequences, hinges on the apparently simple question of 
fact — is the negro, except in color, a man like ourselves, and 
therefore naturally entitled to the same liberty ? 

It is absolutely certain that neither the liberty, the rights, 
nor the interests of one single northern citizen is involved ; 
nothing whatever but a blind and foolish theory of " negro 
slavery" which is attempted to be forced on the South. If 
the people of the two great sections of the country could 



PREFACE. VU 

change places, the vast u anti-slavery" delusion would be ex- 
ploded in sixty days. But as this is impossible, the next best 
thing is to explain the actual condition of things in the South 
to the northern mind. This great work the author has under- 
taken, not to defend an imaginary slavery, for it needs no de- 
fense, but to explain the social order — to demonstrate to the 
senses, as well as the reason, that the negro is a different and 
subordinate being, and in his normal condition at the South ; 
and thus to show the enormous and fathomless folly, crime, 
and impiety wrapped up in the great " anti-slavery" delusion 
of the day. The former edition of this work was put to press 
so hurriedly, that it contained many errors, but the present 
one has been carefully revised ; and, moreover, the introduc- 
tory chapter has been rewritten, in order to present a more 
distinct history of the origin and progress of the great British 
" anti-slavery" imposture which is now working out its legiti- 
mate and designed purpose in the destruction of the American 
Union. 

In conclusion, the author begs to say, that mere literary 
display or fine writing is with him quite a subordinate consid- 
eration. He only desires to be understood, and, that the grand 
and momentous truths described in this book shall be clearly 
comprehended by the masses, with the confident assurance that 
when they come to understand that their own liberty, welfare, 
and prosperity are all hazarded in a blind crusade after that 
which, could it be accomplished, would be the greatest calam- 
ity ever inflicted on a civilized people, the causeless and sense- 
less, but frightful sectional conflict now raging will be speed- 
ily terminated by the universal uprising of the northern 
masses in favor of a government of white men, and union 
with the South. 



CONTENTS 



PART I. 

CHAPTER I. 

CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 

Page 
European Misconception of the Negro — Monarchical Hostility to Amer- 
ican Institutions — Imposture or Delusion of Wilberforce — False Issue 
of a Single Human Race — Dictation of European "Writers — Subservi- 
ency of the American Mind 17 

CHAPTER II. 

LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 

Divisions of the Organic "World — Each Form of Being an Independent 
Creation — Harmony in the Economy of Animal Life — The Races speci- 
fically different from each other — A Single Species Impossible — Fal- 
lacies of Linnaeus and other European Naturalists — Ignorance of 
Educated Men on this Subject 34 



CHAPTER III. 

THE HUMAN CREATION. 

Subdivisions of Mankind— The Difierent Races of Men — Characteristics 
of each — The Caucasian — The Mongolian — The Malay — The Aborigi- 
nal American — Caucasian Remains in Mexico — The Esquimaux — The 
Negro Race ; its Origin ; Observations of Livingston, Garth, and others 



X CONTENTS. 

Page 
— Hybrids confounded with the TypicalNegro — The Dogma of a Single 
Eace — Mankind Created in Groups — The Bible Aspect of the Question 
— Inconsistency of the Advocates of the Single Race Theory 44 

CHAPTER IV. 

HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 

Origin of the Caucasian Race — Bible Accounts — Invasion of Egypt by 
the Master Race — The Caucasians in Assyria, Persia, and Babylon — 
Origin of the Mongolians — The Use of the Term " Barbarian" — The 
History of the Greeks — Not the Authors of Political Liberty — Athens 
not a Democracy — The Roman Republic and Empire — Citizenship a 
Privilege, not a Right — The Advent of Christianity the Advent of De- 
mocracy — The Dark Ages — The Races that Figured in that Era — The 
Crusades — The Asiatic Invasion — The Carthaginians — The Arabs — 
The Downfall of the Roman Empire — The Reformation — All the Nu- 
merous Varieties of the White Race Subsiding into Three Well-known 
Eamilies, the Celtic, the Teutonic and Sclavonic — General Review — 
The Intellectual Powers of the White Race the same in all Ages — 
Knowledge only Progressive — The Inferior Races Incapable of Acquir- 
ing and Transmitting Knowledge — The Chinese no Exception 63 

CHAPTER V 

COLOR. 

The Cause of Color Unknown — The Caucasian Color the Index of the 
Character ; the Contrary the Case with the Negro Race — The Black 
Complexion a Sign of Inferiority — Misuse of the term " Colored 
Man" 88 

CHAPTER VI. 

FIGURE. 
Differences in Form — The Negro Incapable of Standing Upright — Other 
Marks of Inferiority — The Relative Approximation of the Ourang- 
Outang to the Negro and the Caucasian 92 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE HAIR. 

The Hair of the Caucasian and Negro Contrasted — The Beard of the 
Caucasian indicative of Superiority — The Negro and other Races have 
not the Flowing Beard of the Caucasian 98 



CONTENTS. XI 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FEATURES. 

Page 
The Features the True Reflex of the Inner Nature — "Variations of Size, 
Outlines, Complexion, etc., of the Caucasian Race — Resemblance of 
Negroes to each other in Size and Appearance — Inability of the Negro 
Features to express the Emotional Feelings peculiar to the Caucasian, 
etc., etc 105 

CHAPTER IX. 

LANGUAGE. 

Divided into two Portions— First Capacity of Expression— Second Ar- 
rangement into Parts of Speech — All Beings have a Language, each 
Specific and in Accordance with its Organism — The Vocal Organs of 
the Negro — No Negro can Speak the Language of the White Man 
Correctly — Negroes can be Distinguished by their Voices — A Negro 
Musical Artist Unknown — Musical Genius Requires a Drain of Cor- 
responding Complexity — The Negro's Love of Music merely Sensuous, 
and Manifested by the Feet as much as by the Brain 109 



CHAPTER X. 

THE SENSES. 

Organism of the Senses — Their Strength and Acuteness in Inferior Races 
—The Cause of Negro Indolence Explained — The Necessity of Govern- 
ing the Negro — Incapacity of the " Free Negro" to Produce Sufficient 
for his own Support — His Ultimate Extinction Simply a Question of 
Time — Incapacity of the Negro for the Higher Branches of Mechanism 
=— Effect of Flogging on the Negro Senses, etc,, etc 115 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE BRAIN. 

Erroneous Impressions Relative to the Brain — What Constitutes the 
Brain — Its Size the True Test of Intelligence — General Uniformity of 
the Negro Brain — Its Correspondence with the Body — Its Size, when 
Compared with that of the White Man — The Folly and Impiety of At- 
tempting to Equalize those whom God has made Unequal, etc 125 



xii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XII. 

GENERAL SUMMARY. 

Page 
Eecapitulation and Review of the Outward Characteristics of the Negro 
— Color, etc., seen to be only a Single Pact out of the Millions of Facts 
separating Races — Inner Qualities necessarily Correspondent with the 
Outward ones — Conclusion 132 



P A It T II. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

HYBRIDISM. 

The Laws of Interunion fully Explained — A fixed and well-defined 
Limit to Mulattoism — Prostitution in the North, and Mulattoism in the 
South — Amalgamation and its Consequences — The Physiological Laws 
governing Mulattoism and Mongrelism— Condition of the Negro in 
Jamaica, Hayti, etc.— The Negro, when Isolated, certain to Relapse 
into his Original Barbarism — Intellectual Difference between Negroes 
and Mulattoes — The Viciousness and Cowardice of the Mongrel — His 
Low Grade of Vitality, etc., etc 143 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE "SLAVE TRADE," OR THE IMPORTATION OF NEGROES, 

General Review of the Subject — The Absurdity of Attempting to Civilize 
Africa — The Adaptability of the Negro to Tropical Labor — Las Casas 
and the Negroes and Indians — How the Spanish Government con- 
ducted " the Slave Trade" — Its Inhumanity, as practiced by the 
Dutch and English— The Benefits of the Original " Slave Trade"— The 
Reason why England is so Anxious to Abolish " Slavery," etc., etc... 168 



CHAPTER XV. 

NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

The Law of Adaptation — The Natural Relation of Men to Animals, of 
Parents to Offspring, of Men of the Same Species to Each Other — 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

Page 
American Institutions based on the Natural Relations, or the Natural 
Equality of the Race — Political Equality the Normal Order of the 
"White Man — Disregard of the Natural Relations in Europe — Repres- 
sion of the Natural Order — Result of the Employment of Force to Pre- 
serve the Existing Condition — Popular Ignorance of the Relations of 
Races — Juxtaposition of White Men and Negroes — Natural Inferiority 
and Social Subordination of the latter — The Natural, or Uneducated 
Negro of Africa, compared with the Civilized Negro of America — 
Free Negroism a Social Disease — Social Subordination, with the Pro- 
tection of the White Man, the Normal Condition of the Negro 119 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CHATTELISM. 

Historic Slavery — Its Origin — Its Character — All White People — Often 
Highly Educated Men — Their Abject Dependence on the Wih or Cap- 
rice of the Owner — Their Incapacity to Propagate Themselves — Their 
Restoration to Citizenship, etc. — Nothing whatever in Common with 
the Social Subordination of Negroes in our Time — The Industrial Ca- 
pacity of the Negro all that the Master owns — Care and Kindness of 
the Master — Rapid Increase of the Negro Population when in their 
Normal Condition, etc 204 



CHAPTER XVII. 

EDUCATION OF NEGROES, 

The Education of the Negro should be in Harmony with his Wants and 
Mental Capacity — The Folly of Attempting to Educate the Negro as 
we do the Caucasian — The Negro always a Child in Intellect — The 
Duty of the Master to set his " Slave" a Good Example — The Imitative 
Faculty of the Negro mistaken for Intelligence, etc 215 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 

Love of the Caucasian Mother for her Offspring — Relative Capacity of 
White and Black Children — The Negress, after a certain period, loses 
all Love for, or Interest in, her Offspring — Affection for his Master the 
Strongest Feeling of which the Negro is capable, etc., etc 223 



XIV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

MARRIAGE. 

Page 
The Idea that Marriage does not Exist among " Slaves" Repugnant to 
the Northern Mind — Its Effect on Increasing the Anti-Slavery De- 
lusion — New England Women — Their Domestic Education Admirable 
— Their Mistake as to the Pacts of Marriage at the South — Their 
Southern Sisters— "What is Marriage ?— Not Simply a Civil Contract— 
A Natural Relation — The Love of Negroes Impulsive and Capricious. 223 



CHAPTER XX. 

CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

How the Earth is Divided — Its Fauna and Flora; — All Organized Beings 
have their Centres of Existence peculiar to Themselves — No such 
thing as the Creation of the same Species in Different Centres of 
Life — The more elevated the Organism, the less subject to Exter- 
nal Circumstances — Incapacity of the Negro to Live in Northern 

, Latitudes — Their Miserable Condition and Rapid Extinction in Can- 
ada — Industrial Adaptation of the Caucasian to Intemperate Latitudes 
— Why white Labor is worth more than that of the Negro at the 
North — Industrial Adaptation of the Negro to Tropical and Tropicoid 
Products — Absurdity of the Ordinance of 1181 — The Acquisition of 
Southern Territory always saves the North from so-called Negro 
Slavery — "Extension of Slavery" vital to both White and Black — 
Absolute Necessity of Negro Labor in the Tropics — Production, and 
therefore Civilization, otherwise Impossible 245 



CHAPTER XXI. 

NORTH AND SOUTH THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF 

GOVERNMENT. 

The Progenitors of our so-called Slaves, though mainly Imported at the 
North, ultimately found their way South — Difference between the 
Early Colonists of both Sections of the Country — Virginia Mainly 
Settled by the Cavaliers — The Southern Leaders the Originators and 
Upholders of our Present System of Government — The Presence of 



CONTENTS. XV 

Page 

the Negro, in his Natural Condition, conducive to the Equality of 
"White Men — The Harmony of Southern Society — The Interests of 
" Slaveholder" and "Non-Slaveholder," and of Master and "Slave" 
are Indivisible — The Presence of the Negro in his Normal Condition 
the Happiest Event in Human Affairs, etc 270 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE ALLIANCE OF NORTHERN" AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. 

The Antagonism of Ideas after the Constitution was formed — The Two 
Opposing Leaders, Hamilton and Jefferson, in Washington's Cabinet — 
Hamilton's Financial Policy Wrong — The British System — The Alien 
and Sedition Laws — British " Liberty" — Conflict of Labor and Capital 
— The Producing Classes at the North without Leaders — The "Wealth 
and Power in the hands of the Federalists — At the South the Slave- 
holders were Producers — Mr. Jefferson's Declaration that they were 
the Allies of the Northern Laborers True — The Kentucky and Vir- 
ginia Resolutions of 1798 the True Exposition of our Federal System 
—Civil Revolution of 1800 293 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 

The Number of Negroes on this Continent — The " Free" Negro — Im- 
possibility of his Living out the Life of the White Man — The " Free" 
Negroes of Virginia and Maryland — The Drawback of the " Free" 
Negro Population — Its Dangerous Elements — Its Immoral Charac- 
ter — Its Tax on the Laboring Classes — Its Ultimate Extinction — 
Slavery in Brazil and Cuba — The White Man Degraded there— Social 
Danger — Tropical Civilization — Intellect of the White Man, and the 
Labor of the Negro Essential to it — The Condition of Jamaica — 
White Blood being Extinguished — The Tendency of the British 
System to Force Negroes to a Forbidden Level with White Men — 
Negro Officials — Knighting a Negro — The Effect of Legal and Social 
Equality — The Extinction of the White Race in the West Indies only 
a Question of Time — The Negro Returning to Savageism — Hayti — 
Terrible Results of the British Anti-Slavery Policy — An African 
Heathenism in America 309 



XVI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

CONCLUSION. 

Page 

Review of the Subject — Juxtaposition with the Subordinate Race has 

Originated New Ideas in the Master Race, and Rendered Republican 
Liberty Practicable — Beneficent Union of Capital and Labor in the 
South — A Southern Majority and Northern Minority have Acquired 
all the Territory, Fought all the Battles, and Conducted the Nation 
in every Step of its Growth, since its Foundation to the Present 
Time — The Acquisition of the Gulf States has Secured Equal Rights 
to the Masses at the North — Final Acquisition of Cuba, Central 
America, etc., Essential to the National Development — Extension of 
so-called Slavery a Vital Law of National Existence, and Absolutely 
Essential to American Civilization 336 



CHAPTER I. 

CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 

" American slavery," though having no existence in fact, 
is a phrase which, for the last forty years, has been oftener 
heard than American democracy ; yet the latter is one of 
the great powers of the earth, and destined, in the course 
of time, to revolutionize the world. But in this promin- 
ence of an abstraction, and indifference, or apparent indiffer- 
ence, to the grandest fact of modern times, is witnessed the 
wide-spread and almost despotic influence of the European 
over the American mind. What is here termed " American 
slavery," is the status of the negro in American society — the 
jsocial relation of the negro to the white man — which, being in 
accord with the natural relations of the races, springs spon- 
taneously from the necessities of human society. The white 
citizen is superior, the negro inferior; and, therefore, when- 
ever or wherever they happen to be in juxtaposition, the 
human law should accord, as it does accord in the South, with 
these relations thus inherent in their organizations, and thus 
fixed forever by the hand of God. And were America isolated 
from Europe — did that sea of fire, which Mr. Jefferson once 
wished for, really divide the Old World and the New, and 
thus separate us from the mental obliquities and moral per- 
versities of the former — then any other relation than that now 
common to the South, would be an impossible conception to 
the American mind. 

The words "slave" and "slavery" were scarcely heard a 
hundred years ago, as indeed they will be unheard a hun- 



18 CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 

clred years hence; and prior to the Revolution of 1776, the 
people of America were quite unconscious of that mighty 
" evil," now so oppressive to many otherwise sensible minds, 
though this imaginary slavery then spread over the whole 
continent. All new communities are distinguished by a cer- 
tain advance in civilization over the elder ones, however rude 
the former may appear in some respects, or whatever may be 
the over-refinement, or seeming refinement, of the latter. 
Truth lives forever — "the eternal years of God are hers;" 
and all real knowledge, all true progress made by the race, is 
treasured up, and carried with it in all its wanderings, whether 
from the Nile to the Tiber, or from the Thames to the Hudson ; 
while the errors, the foolish traditions and vicious habits, men- 
tal and moral, that gather about it, and weaken, and sometimes 
so overlie and conceal the truth as to render it useless, are left 
behind. We see this even in our own energetic and progres- 
sive society. The younger States are the most enlightened 
States ; and the West, whatever may be its wants, or supposed 
wants among a certain class, is really more civilized than the 
East. That community which is the most prosperous — where 
there is the greatest amount of happiness — where there is 
relatively the greatest number of independent citizens — is 
per se and of necessity the most civilized; for the end of 
existence, the object of the All- wise and beneficent Creator 
— happiness for His creatures — is here most fully accom- 
plished. 

And when we contemplate the history of this continent, 
and compare the character of the early colonists, their history, 
and their influence over the present condition of things, it 
will be found that they remained stationary in exact propor- 
tion as they clung to the ideas and habitudes of the Old 
World ; or advanced towards a better and higher condition 
just as they cast off these influences, and lived in natural 



CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 19 

accord with the circumstances that surrounded them. The 
Spanish conquerors were often the pets and favorites of the 
court, and always the faithful sons of the Church, and brought 
with them the pomps and vanities of the former, and the rigid 
ecclesiastical observances of the latter. When Cortez and 
Pizzaro took possession of a province, they pompously paraded 
the titles and dignities of the emperor before the wondering 
savages, and added vast multitudes of " Christian converts" 
to " Holy Church" with a zeal and fervor that the Beechers 
and Cheevers of our times might envy, but surely could not 
equal. The English colonists, on the contrary, were almost 
all disaffected, or at all events, were charged with disaffection 
to the mother country. This, it is true, was masked under 
religious beliefs and scruples of conscience, but was none the 
less hostile to the political order under which they had been 
persecuted and suffered so long. As soon, therefore, as they 
found themselves in a New World, and relieved from the 
tyranny of the Old, they abandoned, to a great extent, the 
forms, as they already had abandoned many of the ideas, of 
the latter. They recognized the nominal sovereignty of the 
mother country, or rather of the Crown ; but from the landing 
at Jamestown, as well as at Plymouth, all the British colonists 
really governed themselves, made their own laws, provided 
for their own safety, and, except the governor, and occasion- 
ally some subordinate officials, elected their own rulers. The 
result was a corresponding prosperity ; for not only did the 
discipline of self-reliance strengthen the character, and call out 
a higher phase of citizenship among the English colonists, but 
in casting off the habitudes of the old societies, and adopting 
those that were suited to the circumstances surrounding them, 
they soon exhibited a striking contrast to those of Spain and 
of other European powers, who cluug to the ideas and habits 
of Europe. 



20 CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 

But this drawback on American progress — this clinging to 
the habitudes of the Old World, which kept the Spanish and 
French colonies in abject submission to the mother country, 
and which England, at a later period, sought to force on her 
colonies — was not the sole embarrassment in the progress of 
the colonists. They were confronted by wild and ferocious 
savages, who disputed every step of the white European ; and 
though, previous to the independence of the colonies, the 
mother country united with the latter against the former, 
from the breaking out of hostilities in 1776 to the close of the 
War of 1812 the interests of monarchy and savagism may be 
said to have been inseparable, and to have formed a common 
barrier against the march of republicanism. Indeed, it is a 
truth, attested by the whole history of the past, and equally 
so by the circumstances of the present, that the subordinate 
races of this continent — the Indian, Negro, Mongrel, etc. — 
constitute the material, the very stock in trade, of European 
monarchists, to embarrass the progress of American institu- 
tions ; and in every instance where we have been engaged in 
Indian wars, that portion of our people who, in their ignorance 
and blindness, have condemned the course of their own gov- 
ernment, have been the unconscious instruments of the enemies 
of their country, and in their sickly sentimentality and folly, 
they have sought to obstruct the progress of American civiliza- 
tion. Monarchy consists in artificial distinctions of kings, 
nobles, peasants, etc., or it may be defined as the rule of 
classes of the same race, and, from the inherent necessities of 
its organization, it is forced to make war on the natural dis- 
tinction of races. Prior to the breaking out of the American 
Revolution, there was no necessity for calling in the aid of the 
Negro or the Indian to crush out the libertv of the white man. 
The colonists, as has been observed, were practical republi- 
cans, and substantially governed themselves ; but they had not 



CAUSES OF POPULAE DELUSION. 21 

questioned the European system or theory of monarch ism. 
When they did this, however, in that grand Declaration of 
Mr. Jefferson, that all men (meaning, of course, his own race) 
were created free and equal, the British monarchists instinct- 
ively and, indeed necessarily, resorted to the means at hand — 
to the subordinate races of America — to demoralize and break 
down this immortal truth. An English judge, anticipating 
the coming rebellion of the Americans, had already ruled that 
" slavery," or social subordination of the negro to the white 
man, was a result of municipal law — a creature of the lex loci / 
and though this was' in language that led vast numbers of 
people into error, its technical as well as absolute falsehood is 
apparent, when we remember that no such " law" has ever 
existed, either now or at any other time, in American history, 
from the Canadian Lakes to Cape Horn. But it served as a 
foundation and stand-point for that wide-spread imposture and 
world-wide delusion which has since so overshadowed the 
land, and, with the best intentions on their part, so deluded 
Americans themselves into a blind warfare against the prog- 
ress, prosperity, and indeed the civilization, of their coun- 
try and continent. In the seven years' war waged to crush 
out the rebellion of the Colonies, England subsidized the 
savage Indian tribes wherever it was possible to do so; 
and in the subsequent War of 1812, her agents partially suc- 
ceeded in combining all the savages on our western border, 
under Tecumseh, with the design of shutting us out forever 
from the country west of the Mississippi. The result of this 
monstrous alliance of European monarchists and American 
savages to beat back the advancing civilization of the New 
World, to hold in check, and, if possible, to defeat and over- 
throw republicanism, has ended in the destruction and almost 
utter annihilation of the North American Indians. General 
Jackson's campaigns in Florida, as well as those of Harrison 



22 CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 

in the West, and, to a certain extent, even the later Seminole 
War, all had their origin in the same causes, the open or 
secret intrigues of British agents, stimulating the savages to 
resist the onward march of American civilization. Nor was it 
anything like the former contests of the agents of England 
and France to enlist the aid of the savages against each 
other ; for, repulsive and iniquitous as it may be for men of 
the same race to employ subordinate races against their own 
blood, they were struggling for possession of a continent, and 
all means, doubtless, seemed legitimate that should give them 
victory. But in this case it was a war against Americanism 
— against a new order of political society — against a system 
based on a principle of utter antagonism to monarchism, and 
which if permitted to develop its legitimate results, to grow 
into a new and grander order of civilized society than the 
world had ever yet witnessed, the rotten and worn-out sys- 
tems of Europe were doomed to certain and perhaps early 
overthrow. It is true, the agents employed did not know 
this — indeed, their European masters were ignorant, perhaps, 
of the principles involved ; but the instinct of self-preservation, 
the instinct inherent in hostile systems impelled them forward, 
while the ends to be reached, or the consequences of success, 
were always too apparent to be mistaken. But their savage 
instruments were destroyed in the conflict, in the uses to 
which they were applied by their European allies ; and what- 
ever may be the future fate of the Aborigines in Spanish 
America, the North American Indian is virtually annihilated. 
A few wild tribes of the West and South-west, whose means 
for preserving existence are every day growing less, still 
remain, and some remnants of semi-civilized tribes, which are 
perishing even more rapidly than the former, are to be found 
on our Western frontier ; but the time is not distant, perhaps, 
when they will be wholly and absolutely extinct. 



CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 23 

What might have been, it is useless to conjecture ; but the 
notion of a certain class of sentimentalists among us, that we 
have done the Indian great wrong, and that, had we treated 
him with kindness and justice, he might have become civil- 
ized, and a part of our permanent population, of course, is ab- 
surd ; for it is founded on that foolish dogma of a single race, 
which Europe has fastened on the American mind, and which 
supposes the Indian, as the Negro, etc., to have the same na- 
ture as themselves. Nor is the notion of others, that the 
Indian is incapable of civilization, and therefore destined to 
give way before the advance of the white man, worthy of any 
consideration ; for this involves the paradox of being created 
without a purpose, a supposition not to be entertained a mo- 
ment ; for the most insignificant beings in the lowest forms of 
organic life have their uses, and the human creature, surely, 
was not created in vain. The simple truth is, that we need to 
know what the Indian is in fact, his true nature and true rela- 
tions to our own race, and then, as we have done in the case 
of the Negro, adapt the social and governmental machinery 
to the wants of both races. But this employment and con- 
sequent destruction of the Indians of America by the monarch- 
ists of Europe, though often inflicting great temporary evil 
on our border settlements, did not retard our progress in the 
least, nor did England, to any appreciable extent, succeed in 
her objects. The theory or dogma of a single race, which her 
writers and publicists had set up about the time of the Revo- 
lution, produced, however, immense practical results both in 
Europe and America. The doctrines of the American Revolu- 
tion, as was foreseen by British statesmen, soon became uni- 
versally accepted in France, and threatened to overturn mon- 
archy all over the Continent, and indeed in England itself. 
Dr. Johnson, Wilberforce, Pitt, and all the great writers and 
leaders of England, naturally enough adopted the notion that 



24 CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 

Indians, Negroes, etc., were men like themselves, except in color, 
cultivation, etc. ; but they were impelled, by the necessities of 
their system and the preservation of monarchical institutions, 
to practicalize this theory to the utmost extent in their power, 
and thus divert the attention of their own oppressed white 
people from their wrongs, by holding up before them con- 
tinually the imaginary wrongs of " American slaves.'" They 
said, " It is true, you laborers of Yorkshire and operatives of 
Birmingham have a hard life, a life of constant toil and priva- 
tion ; but you are free-born Englishmen, and your own mas- 
ters, and in all England there is not a single slave ; while in 
America, in that so-called land of freedom, where there is no 
king, or noble, or law of primogeniture, and where, in theory, 
it is declared that all men are created free and equal, one sixth 
of the population are slaves, so abject and miserable that they 
are sold in the public markets, like horses and oxen. What, 
then, are your oppressions or your wrongs in comparison with 
those of American slaves ? or what are the evils or the injus- 
tice of monarchy when contrasted with those dark and damn- 
ing crimes of American democracy, that thus, in these enlight- 
ened times, dooms one sixth of the population to open and 
undisguised slavery ?" Such was the argument of the British 
writers, and it was unanswerable if it had rested on fact — 
if the foundation were true, then the inference, of course, was 
unavoidable. If the so-called American slave was created free 
and equal with his master, then all that the British writers 
charged would have been true enough, and American slavery, 
in comparison with British liberty — or what passed for such 
in Yorkshire and Birmingham — would have been a wrong, so 
deep, damning, and fathomless, that no words in our language 
would be able to express its enormity. How was the poor, 
ignorant, and helpless laborer, or even his defenders, Fox, 
Sheridan, and other liberal leaders of the day, to answer this 



CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 25 

argument ? They did not attempt it. They admitted that 
" American slavery" was all that it was charged to be — that it 
was a wrong and evil immeasurably greater and more atro- 
cious than any of those which the people of France had risen 
against, or that the masses in England suffered under ; but 
they hoped that the great principle of the American Revolution 
was strong enough to overcome this wrong, and in the pro- 
cess of time, to " abolish slavery," and that liberty would be- 
come universal among Americans. Indeed, some of those who 
had been the most devoted believers in the great American doc- 
trine, both in England and France, were so painfully impressed 
by the seeming wrong done the negro, that they lost their in- 
terest, to a great extent, in the real wrongs of the white man, 
and devoted all their efforts to the former. Societies were 
formed in London and Paris, funds contributed, books pub- 
lished, tracts distributed, and extensive arrangements entered 
into, with the sole purpose of relieving the " American slave" 
from the fancied wrongs that were heaped on him ; and their 
societies, these " Amis des JVoirs" patronized by Robes- 
pierre and other leaders of the people, which were formed in 
almost every town in France and England, popularized the 
movement, and so identified the imaginary cause of the negro 
with that of the European masses, that to this day they doubt- 
less seem inseparable. And even in our own times, we have 
witnessed the sorry spectacle of English laborers contributing 
of their wretched pittance to glorify some abolition hero or 
heroine of the " Uncle Tom" pattern, under the deplorable 
misconception, of course, that these blind tools of the enemies 
of liberty were faithful defenders of a common cause, when, in 
truth, they were vastly more dangerous to that cause than 
the open and avowed friends of despotism. But this very 
natural mistake of the friends of freedom in Europe, this ig- 
norance and misconception of the negro nature and relations 

2 



26 CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 

to the white man, which led Fox in England, and Robespierre 
in France, to confound the cause of the oppressed multitudes 
of their own race with the imaginary interests of negrodom, 
extended and unfortunate as it was and still is, was surpassed 
by a still more insidious and more extended influence. Wil- 
berforce, who, more than any other man, gave form and direc- 
tion to the great " anti-slavery" delusion of modern times, was 
eminently pious — as piety is accepted by a large portion of the 
religious world. He was an Episcopalian in form, but pre- 
eminently a Puritan in practice ; and, while doubtless sin- 
cere in his belief, and perfectly correct in his religious habits, 
he was one of the most complete bigots, religious, political, 
and social, the world ever saw. Belonging to the ruling class, 
and possessed of a considerable fortune, he believed that his 
own status was the stand-point, and himself the model, for the 
government of societv, and therefore was as doLj-o-edlv and 
bitterly opposed to any change in England, or to any reform 
in English society, as he was earnest in his efforts to relieve 
the " sufferings of the slave" in America. In a public career 
of some forty years, as a member of Parliament, he never failed 
to record his vote against any increase of popular freedom, or 
any change that tended to ameliorate the condition of the white 
masses, and just as steadily and uniformly labored to " elevate" 
the negro to the status of the English laborer, or, at all events, 
to favor that final " abolition of slavery," which he* himself 
was not, however, destined to witness in the British American 
possessions. But throughout he regarded the question rather 
as a religious than a political one, and at an early period, in 
this respect, impressed his own character on it. Identified 
with the Church, all his notions those of the High Church 
party — substantially the notions that Archbishop Laud enter- 
tained two centuries before — by birth and association con- 
nected, with the landed aristocracy, and yet distinguished for 



CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 27 

practical piety, for a zeal and devotion to his religious duties 
that the most zealous among the Dissenters and Evangelicals 
might imitate but could not surpass, this was just the man 
to impress a great movement with his own characteristics, and 
the " anti-slavery cause" became the cause of religion as well 
as of liberty with the religious world. Nor was it confined to 
the " American slave ;" it embraced the whole world of heath- 
endom ; and a religious crusade sprang up, that finally became 
more extended, and, in some respects, more permanent, than 
the great political movement inaugurated by Jefferson a few 
years before. And if the Father of Lies, Lucifer himself, had 
plotted a plan or scheme for concealing a great truth, and 
embarrassing a great cause, he could have accomplished noth- 
ing more effective than the movement that Wilberforce inaug- 
urated for the professed benefit of the negro and other subor- 
dinate races of mankind, which, masked under the form of 
religious duty, and appealing to the conscience, the love of 
proselytism, the enthusiasm, and even the bigotries of the 
religious world, has, for more than half a century, held in 
thrall the conscience as well as the reason of Christendom. 
Robespierre, and other patrons of the Amis des JVbirs, could 
only present a common cause, that " universal liberty" which 
they declared to be the birthright of all men, and which it 
were better that every conceivable calamity should happen 
rather than this " great principle" should perish ; but when it 
became the duty of every Christian man and woman, every 
follower of Christ and professor of religion, to work and 
pray for "the deliverance of the slave," then a power was 
aroused that nothing could resist, for it became an imme- 
diate and sacred duty to labor in this cause. Missionary so- 
cieties were organized, money contributed by millions both 
in Europe and America, enthusiastic men and women offered 
their services, even children were taught to give their pocket- 



28 CAUSES OF POPULAR DELISION. 

money for a cause so holy as that of redeeming the " slave," 
while all this time innumerable multitudes of their own race, 
their own blood, those whom God had created their equals, 
and endowed with like capacities, instincts, and wants, and 
therefore designed for the same happiness as themselves, were 
left to grovel in midnight darkness and abject misery. 

It is not intended to sneer at or to indulge in unkind criti- 
cism on missionary efforts. On the contrary, it is frankly admit- 
ted that they sprang from the sincerest conviction, and were 
generally pursued with an utter disregard of selfish and merce- 
nary considerations ; but in not understanding the diversity of 
races, these efforts were more likely to do harm than good. A 
man's first duties are to his own household ; and no amount or 
extent of benefits conferred on strangers, can excuse him for 
neglecting the former ; and even if the " heathen" — the Negro, 
Indian, and Sandwich Islander — had been benefited by the 
efforts of Wilberforce and his followers, the neglect of the ig- 
norant, darkened, and miserable millions of their own race, 
was a wrong that scarcely has a parallel in history. But they 
did not benefit the subordinate races, but, on the contrary, 
assuming them to be beings like themselves, when they were 
widely different beings, they necessarily injured them; and 
when it is reflected that they not only neglected the ignorant 
and degraded multitudes of their own race, but got up a false 
issue, in order to distract the attention and conceal the wrongs 
of their own people, then an unequalled crime was committed. 

The government of England, which is simply an embodi- 
ment of the class to which Wilberforce belonged, acted in con- 
cert with these religious efforts ; and thus we see the leaders 
of the popular cause in the Old World, Fox and Robespierre, 
the Church and Aristocracy, all acting together in a common 
cause, and laboring, in fact, to retard the progress and the 
liberation of millions upon millions of their own race, under 



CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 29 

the pretence, find doubtless with many, in the belief, that they 
were laboring for the benefit of the negro and other subordi- 
nate races. The government expended about a thousand 
millions to crush out American liberty in 1776 ; but it is 
quite likely that an almost equal sum, expended for the pro- 
fessed benefit of the negro, has accomplished vastly more than 
all other things together to protract the liberation of her own 
masses. It has been estimated that six hundred millions 
have been expended nominally to put down the slave trade, 
but in reality to pervert the natural relations of races, and 
force the subordinate negro to the status of the British laborer. 
The interest on this enormous sum is annually drawn from the 
sweat and toil of the English masses ; and every hut and cot- 
tage in the British Islands is forced to surrender a portion of 
its daily food, or of the daily earnings of its owner, to pay the 
interest on money squandered on the negro in America! 
The amount thus paid, properly expended, would be amply 
sufficient to give a good English education to the entire labor- 
ing class ; but that would be an overwhelming calamity to the 
governing class, who could not retain their power for a single 
day after the masses were thus enlightened. 

A few years since, famine and pestilence swept over Ireland, 
carrying oif some three millions of the Irish people, all of 
whom might have been saved if the annual amount wasted on 
negroes in America had been applied to this beneficent and 
legitimate purpose. Indeed, it is quite possible that if the 
money wrung from the sweat and toil of Irishmen alone, for the 
pretended benefit of the negro, had been appropriated to the 
relief of the suffering multitudes of that unhappy people, few 
would really have perished. The mortgage on the bodies and 
souls of future generations of British laborers, for the avowed 
purpose of " doing good" to the negro, enormous as the 
amount mav be — and it has been estimated as high as one thou- 



30 CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 

sand million dollars — is only a portion of the vast waste and 
wholesale destruction of property involved in the British Free 
Negro policy, or so-called schemes of philanthropy. Farms 
and plantations in Jamaica and other islands, valued at fifty 
thousand pounds prior to the " emancipation," were afterward 
sold with difficulty at ten and even five thousand pounds; and 
indeed extensive districts were abandoned by their unfortu- 
nate owners. An infamous system of fraud and inhumanity, 
practiced of late years on the ignorant and simple Chinese and 
other Asiatics, has enabled some planters to recover and re- 
store their wasted and plundered estates ; and the vile -hypo- 
crites who filled the world with their doleful lamentations over 
the sorrows of Africa, not only wink at this infinitely greater 
wrong practiced on Asiatics, but resort to the effects attending 
it, as a proof that emancipation has not ruined these beautiful 
islands! Could audacity and hypocrisy surpass, or did they ever 
surpass, this shameless fraud ? But this new and vastly more 
atrocious system of " man-stealing," is transitional and tem- 
porary. The Mongol or Asiatic is rapidly worked up and 
destroyed in the West Indies ; and, as no females are intro- 
duced, they' can never become an essential or permanent ele- 
ment of the population. 

The negro, forced from his normal condition, and into un- 
natural relation to the white man, must relapse into his African 
habits, just as fast as the white element disappears ; and as the 
latter is relatively feeble, the time must soon come, unless we 
take possession and restore the natural order, when civiliza- 
tion itself will utterly perish, and the great heart of the con- 
tinent be surrendered to African savagism ! The eternal and 
immovable laws fixed forever in the heart and organism of 
things, can not be changed or modified by human folly, fraud, 
or power; and therefore the climate, the soil, the products, 
and the means that the Almighty has ordained shall be 



CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 31 

used to make them tributary to human welfare, have their 
fixed and everlasting relations since time began. The brain 
of the white man and the muscles ^of the negro, the mind ot 
the superior and the body of the inferior race, in natural rela- 
tion to each other, are the vital principles of tropical civiliza- 
tion, without which it is as impossible that civilization should 
exist in the great centre of the continent, as that vegetation 
should spring from granite, or animals exist without atmos- 
pheric air ; and, therefore, thrusting the negro from his natural 
sphere into unnatural relations with the white man, necessa- 
rily destroys the latter, and drives the other into his inherent 
and original Africanism. 

The delusion, the folly, or the fraud of Wilberforce and his 
associates, in presenting a false issue to their own wronged 
and oppressed millions, and thus diverting their attention 
from their own oppressions to the imaginary sufferings of 
negroes and other subordinate races, is so transcendent, its 
magnitude so enormous, that we have no terms in our lan- 
guage that can express it ; but great and indeed awful as may 
be this wrong on the white man, it is in some respects really 
surpassed by the evils, if not the wrongs, inflicted on the 
negro. More than one million of negroes are believed to have 
perished, through the means resorted to to suppress the slave 
trade ; and now it is admitted that those attempts have not 
prevented the importation of one single negro ! The world 
needed the products of the tropics ; the labor of a certain 
number of negroes were needed to furnish these products ; and 
therefore, when fifty thousand were required in Cuba, eighty 
thousand were shipped on the African coast, thus leaving a 
margin of thirty thousand to be destroyed by interference 
with the laws of demand and supply. Who can contemplate 
these frightful results without awe, and sorrow, and pity, not 
alone for the victims, but for the authors of such w T ide-spread 



32 CAUSES OP POPULAR DELUSION. 

and boundless calamity. The crusades of the middle ages are 
now recognized as utterly baseless — simple human delusions, 
in which millions of lives were sacrificed, not to an idea, but 
to a false assumption — an assumption that the Holy Sepulchre 
could be recovered at Jerusalem. That crusade of " human- 
ity," in behalf of the subordinate races, set up by Wilberforce 
and his associates in modern times, is also a simple delusion, 
based on a false assumption, the assumption that negroes are 
Nock-white men, or men like ourselves, and though not so 
fatal to human life as the former, its effects or influences on 
human welfare are vastly and immeasurably more deplorable. 
Such is the great " anti-slavery" delusion of our times. It 
is wholly European and monarchical in its origin ; and leaving 
out of view all other considerations, its mere existence among 
us, or that any considerable number of Americans could be so 
deluded and mentally so degraded, as to embrace it, will aston- 
ish posterity to the latest generations. We are in contact 
with the negro — we see he is a negro — a different being from 
ourselves. We will not — even the most deluded Abolitionist 
will not, in his own case or family, act on the assumption that 
he is a being like himself, indeed, would rather see his child 
carried to the grave than intermarried with a negro, however 
rich, cultivated, and pious ; and rather than thus live out his 
own professed belief, he would prefer the death of his whole 
household. The European, on the contrary, naturally enough 
supposes the negro to differ only in color ; and the monarchist 
— the enemy of Democracy — the man opposed to the great 
principle of equality underlying our system — just as naturally 
demands that we shall be consistent and apply it to negroes. 
But instead of enlightening this European ignorance, and 
indignantly rejecting this monarchical impudence, which pro- 
poses that we shall degrade our blood and destroy our institu- 
tions, by including a subordinate race in our political system, 



CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. 33 

we have foolishly, wickedly, and abjectly assented to the Eu- 
ropean assumption, and millions of Americans have based their 
reasonings, and to a certain extent their actions, on this pal- 
pable, fundamental, and monstrous falsehood. Those portions 
of the country most directly under the mental dictation of the 
Old World, are those, of course, most given up to the delu- 
sion, but nearly the whole northern mind has adopted it as a 
mental habit. The time, however, has come when it must be 
exploded, and the reason of the people restored, or it will drag 
after it consequences and calamities that one shudders to con- 
template. Eighty years ago it was an abstraction, universally 
assented to, and just as universally rejected in practice; for 
all the States save one then recognized the legal subordination 
of the negro as a social necessity, whatever the speculative 
notions were on this subject. They generally believed that, 
in some indefinite or mysterious manner, it would — or rather 
that the negro would — become extinct ; and as the industrial 
powers of this element of the general population was not 
specifically adapted to our then territory, all perhaps were 
willing to hope that it should some day disappear. But the 
vast acquisition of Southern territory, the discovery and open- 
ing up of new channels of industry, and the extensive cultiva- 
tion of those great staples so essential to human welfare, which 
are only to be attained on this continent by the labor of the 
negro when directed by the white man ; and, moreover, the 
rapid increase of this population, and the certainty that it 
must remain forever an element of our population, demand 
that this mighty delusion shall be exposed, as it is in fact 
the vilest and most infamous fraud on the freedom, dignity, 
and welfare of the white millions ever witnessed since the 
world began. 



CHAPTER II. 

GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 

The organic world is separated into two great divisions, 
animal and vegetable, or into an 'mate and inanimate beings. In 
regard to the vegetable kingdom, as it is termed, it is not 
necessary to say a word; those desirous of obtaining a thorough 
knowledge of animal life, however, had better begin their stud- 
ies with the more elementary and simple forms of vegetable 
being. Many persons suppose that the whole animate exist- 
ence is linked together by connecting or continuous gradations. 
In a certain sense this may be said to be so ; nevertheless, 
absolutely considered, each family or form of being is a com- 
plete and independent creation. There are resemblances and 
approximations as well as gradations, yet each is perfect in 
itself, and makes up an entire world of its own. The Almighty 
Creator, in His infinite wisdom, has provided against chance," 
or accident, or human caprice, and placed each and every one 
of His works in a position of such absolute independence, that 
one of them, or more, perhaps, might utterly perish, and yet 
the beauty and harmony of nature would remain unimpaired. 
It is certain that some species of animals belonging to the ex- 
isting order have utterly disappeared, and it is quite probable 
chat some species of men have perished ; but the grand econ- 
omy of nature is unaffected by it. It is thought that the abor- 
igines of this continent will, in time, utterly perish, and yet no 
one supposes that that event will disturb the operations of 
nature or deface the fair form of creation. This shows that 



GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION 35 

there is no continuous or connecting link even among species 
of the same family or form of being. If there were such — if 
all the forms of life were continuous and connecting gradations 
— then it is evident that the destruction of one of these con- 
necting links would cast the whole economy of being into utter 
confusion. In a watch, or any other elaborate machinery of 
human contrivance, a single wheel, or cog, or link, however 
minute, torn from its place, involves the disruption, if not ab- 
solute destruction, of the whole machine. And so it is in the 
economy of individual life, for, though one organ may be dis- 
abled, another, to a certain extent, and for a given time, sup- 
plies its place ; yet the vital forces are enfeebled from the 
instant of such accident, and life, if not interrupted, is always 
impaired. But a species, a genus, a class, perhaps, a great 
nimiber of these, might disappear, utterly vanish from exist- 
ence, and those remaining would preserve the integrity and 
completeness the Creator had endowed them with at the 
beginning. While each and every form of life is, therefore, 
perfect in itself and independent of all others, there are resem- 
blances and approximations that must be regarded as of vital 
importance. 

Naturalists have divided or separated the organic world into 
classes, orders, genera, species and varieties. Classes are those 
like the mammalia — that is, all animals where the female nour- 
ishes its offspring by mammary glands. Orders are those like 
the quadrumana — all those having four hands. A genus, or 
a family proper, is composed of species ; and a species in- 
cludes varieties, or possible varieties, of the same being under 
different circumstances. But these classifications are, to a 
considerable extent, arbitrary ; and though they serve the pur- 
pose of facilitating our studies, they may also lead us astray, 
if too closely followed. Genera, or families proper, in many 
cases at least, are, however, susceptible of very exact defin- 



36 GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 

itions. So, too, are species. For example : — The simiadre, or 
monkey family, are so entirely distinct that they will not be or 
need not be confounded with anything else. Some ignorant 
or superficial persons, with the false 1 otion of continuous and 
connecting gradations, have supposed the negro something 
midway between men and animals. But there is no such 
monstrosity in nature, for, as already observed, each form of 
being is a complete and independent creation in itself. A 
genus is composed of a given number of species, all diff—^t 
from each other, and, it need not be repeated, independent of 
each other. These genera are believed to be incapable of in- 
terunion with other genera, though this has been questioned in 
some cases. Species are capable of a limited interunion, though 
it may be doubted if such interunion ever occurs in a wild or 
savage state. And as each species is different in form and 
character from others, so the limited capacity for interunion 
varies, or in other words, hybrids — the product of different 
species — vary in their virility or power of reproduction. The 
given number of species of which a genus is composed, ascends 
or descends in the scale of being, that is, there is a head and 
base to the generic column. The one next above the most 
inferior has all the qualities of the latter, but these qualities 
have a fuller development, that is, the organization is more 
elaborate and the corresponding faculties are of a higher order. 
And indeed this is not confined to mere species or genera even, 
but is true of widely separated beings. Thus, the exalted and 
elegant Caucasian mother — the habitue of the Fifth avenue or 
St. Germain — nourishes her offspring by the same process 
common to the meanest of the mammalia. So, too, in the 
process of gestation, the function of mastication, deglutition, 
digestion, the sense of taste, of sight, etc. — the function is ab- 
solutely the same, but what a world of difference in the mode 



yENEEAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 37 

of its manifestation, that distinguishes the human being from 
the animal ! 

Investigations made by some French physiologists would 
seem to show that the mysterious problem of animal life might 
be simplified, and clearly grasped by the human intellect, by 
simply tracing this great fact to its elementary sources. It is 
said that the embryo (Caucasian) foetus passes through all the 
forms of an innumerable number of lower gradations before it 
reaches its own specific development. And be this as it may, 
enough is seemingly established to demonstrate its truth in re- 
spect to a genus or family, and especially is it demonstrated 
in the human creation. At a certain stage of foetal develop- 
ment there is the cranial manifestation of the Negro, then the 
aboriginal American, the Malay, the. Mongolian, and finally 
the broad expansion and oval perfection of the most perfect of 
all, the superior Caucasian. Nor can these demonstrations be 
mistaken, for it is not a mere question of size but of form. 
The negro brain is small and longitudinal — thus approximat- 
ing to the si niadce and other animals. The aboriginal is larger 
and quadrangular, almost square in its general outline. The 
Mongolian pyramidal, and still larger than either of the others. 
Finally, at the period of complete gestation, there is the full 
and complete oval development, alone peculiar to the Cauca- 
sian. The force of these distinctions may be easily grasped by 
the non-scientific reader by bearing in mind that a female of 
either of these races or species could no more give birth to a 
child with the cranial development of a race different from her 
own, than she could to that of an inferior animal. The dis- 
tinctions of nature, or the boundaries which separate even 
species from each other, are absolutely impassable ; each has 
the hand of the Eternal impressed upon it forever, which 
neither accident nor time can modify in the slightest particular. 
They have, it is true, a limited capacity for interunion, and we 



38 GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 

sometimes witness the disgusting spectacle of a white woman 
with a so-called negro husband. But while the offspring of 
this unnatural connection is limited in number, they partake of 
the nature of* both the parents, and thus the birth becomes 
possible, though at the expense of great physical suffering to 
the mother and perhaps in every case shortening her existence. 
In another place this subject will be more especially discussed; 
it is only referred to in this connection to show the perfect 
order and harmony in the economy of animal life. The primal 
steps — the process of reproduction — the starting point of crea- 
tion — being in complete harmony with the laws governing the 
being, man or animal, after it has readied its mature develop- 
ment. 

The same eternal separation of all the forms of being and 
the same eternal approximations, however varied the manifes- 
tations may be at different periods, remain unaltered and un- 
alterable. Linnreus ventured to place " man" in the category 
or class mammalia, while at the same time he separated the 
mammalia from birds and other forms of being — thus assum- 
ing that the human creation had a closer union with pigs and 
dogs, than the latter have with birds, etc. At this every 
Christian and believer in a future state of being must revolt, 
for though there are certain approximations that cannot be 
disregarded, nevertheless it is absolutely certain that the human 
creation is separated by an interval wider than that separating 
any of the forms of mere animal life, and therefore his classifi- 
cation must be wrong. 

It is not intended to make this a scientific work, but on the 
contrary, to popularize for the general reading of the people, 
some few elementary truths of zoology and physiology in order 
that they can better comprehend the subject really to be dis- 
cussed, viz. : — the specific differences and specific relations of 
the white and black races. But the author feels himself con- 



GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 39 

scientiously impelled to dissent from the # classifications of Lin- 
naeus, and those modern naturalists who follow him, not only as 
being untrue in point of fact, but pregnant with mighty mis- 
chief. Linnaeus placed " man" in the category mammalia, but 
made him an order, a genus and species by himself. This is 
false as a matter of fact, for in the entire world of animal 
existence there is no such fact as a single species. All the 
forms of life are made up of groups or families, properly gen- 
era, and each of these is composed of a certain number of 
species. These species, as already observed, differ from each 
other. They begin with the lowest, or simplest, or grossest 
formation, and rise, one above the other, in the scale of being, 
until the group is completed ; so that they are all, not only 
specifically different from each other, but absolutely unlike 
each other in every thing, in the minutest particle of elemen- 
tary matter as well as in those things palpable to the sense. 
Generally considered, they resemble each other, but specifically 
considered, they are absolutely distinct, and, it need not be 
repeated, the distinctions in each case or each individual spe- 
cies are also specific. 

That Linnaeus and other European naturalists, and especially 
the ethnologists, should make such a mistake, and suppose that 
the human creation is composed of a single species, is perhaps 
natural enough, for they saw but one— the two hundred mil- 
lions of Europe, except a few thousand Laplanders, being all 
Caucasians. But then it is strange how those so ready to 
class men with animals should so widely depart from the spirit 
and order of their own classification. They must have known 
that in the whole world of animate existence there was no such 
fact as a single species, and therefore when assuming only a 
single human species, that they directly contradicted or ig- 
nored the most constant, universal and uniform fact in organic 
life, a fact underlying and forming the very basis of all with 



40 GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 

which they were dealing. This mistake, or misconception, or 
ignorance of European ethnologists, however, is of no particu- 
lar importance. They saw no other and therefore could know 
of no other species of men except their own, and though its 
effect on ourselves has been mischievous, the cause of their 
misconception is so palpable to men's common sense that it 
only needs to be pointed out to be utterly rejected. It is 
about as respectable as the assumptions of the northern Abol- 
itionists, who, though not even venturing out of Massachusetts, 
aifect to know, and doubtless really believe that they do know, 
more about the internal condition of South Carolina or Vir- 
ginia than the people of those States themselves. But facts are 
stubborn things, and, as the Spanish proverb says, " seeing is 
believing." It is impossible that the northern Abolitionist who 
never ventured out of New England can comprehend a condi- 
tion of society that he has never seen. So, too, the authority 
of European writers, necessarily ignorant of the subject, will 
be rejected by those whose very senses assure them that 
negroes are specifically different from white men. And that 
mental dominion which, beginning with the early planting of 
Enropean colonies on this continent, has continued long after 
political independence has been secured, only needs to be cast 
off altogether, to convince every one of the utter absurdity of 
European teachings on the subject. 

But there is an objection to the LinnaBan classification infin- 
itely more important than this misconception in regard to 
species. He places his one human species (Caucasian) in the 
class mammalia, and therefore assumes that the human creation 
has a closer connection with a class of animals, than these ani- 
mals themselves have with some other forms of animal life. 
For example : men (and white men, too) approximate more 
closely to dogs and cats than the latter do to owls and eagles ! 
It does not help the matter to say that this is only in their 



GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 41 

animal structures, for there is an invariable and imperishable 
unity between the material organization and the external man- 
ifestations or faculties, which is fixed forever, and the conclu- 
sion or inference from the Linnsean assumption is unavoidable 
— if men approximate more closely to a class of animals than 
these animals do to some other class, then it is absurd to sup- 
pose the purposes assigned them by the Almighty are so 
widely different as our reason and instinct alike impel us to 
believe. To hope for or to believe in immortality, or in a des- 
tiny so transcendent, while beings that closely resembled us 
perished with this life, in common with those still farther 
separated from themselves, was such a contradiction to reason, 
that men involuntarily shrunk from it, and the result has 
been to repel vast numbers of people from the study and 
investigation of this most essential element of all knowl- 
edge. The Materialists promptly accepted it, and wielded it 
with tremendous effect in advancing their gloomy and forbid- 
ding philosophy, while those impelled by that innate and inde- 
scribable consciousness of the soul itself, which, in its Godlike 
knowledge, rises high beyond the realms of reason and mere 
human wdll, and assures them of a life immortal and everlast- 
ing, shrunk from all study or investigation of the laws of phys- 
ical life, as if it involved consequences fatal to that higher life 
of the soul. The former said, and said truly, if men have a 
closer union with the quadrumana than the latter have with 
birds, etc., then it is all nonsense to suppose that they have an 
eternity of life, while those separated by a still wider interval 
are limited to the present. And the only reply to their reason- 
ing has been the refusal to investigate the subject or to study 
the laws of God, and to admit, inferentially at least, that there 
was a contradiction between the word and the works of the 
Almighty. 

Nothing is more common than to find men of great intehV 



42 GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 

gence on almost every subject except this, the most vital, 
indeed the foundation and starting point of all real knowledge. 
Especially are clergymen ignorant, and those who assume to 
be the interpreters of the laws of God are not unfrequently 
the most ignorant of the most palpable and fundamental of 
these laws. This should not be so, and in all reasonable prob- 
ability would not be so had it not been for the untruthful and 
unfortunate classification of Linnaeus. Instead of meeting the 
Materialists on their own ground, and showing them that how- 
ever approximating to certain forms of animal life, the 
human creation was yet separated by an absolutely boundless 
as well as impassable interval — for the distinctions between 
them are utterly unlike those separating mere animal beings — 
they tacitly admitted the truth of their assumptions, and met 
it by a blind and foolish refusal to investigate the matter, in- 
deed have generally cast their influence on the side of ignor- 
ance, and advised against the study of nature and the noblest 
works of God. 

But there can be no contradiction ; God cannot lie ; and 
whatever seeming conflict there may be at times between His 
word and His works, a further search is alone needed to show 
their perfect uniformity. It is true that the physical resem- 
blances between men and beings of the class mammalia seem 
closer than those of the latter and some other forms of life, 
but while there is also an eternal correspondence between 
structure and functions, it is rational and philosophical to sup- 
pose that the difference in the qualities or external manifesta- 
tions is the safest standard of comparison. Or in other words, 
whatever may be the seeming physical resemblances, the dif- 
ferences in the faculties show that the former are not reliable. 
For example: in contemplating the intelligence of certain 
quadrupeds and birds, can any one suppose or believe for a 
moment that the difference between them in this respect equals 



GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. 43 

or even approaches to that separating both from human be- 
ings ? And in the present state of our knowledge, our igno- 
rance of the elementary arrangement of organic life, it is surely 
safer and more philosophical to be governed by our reason 
rather than our senses — to accept the differences which sepa- 
rate human intelligence from the animal world as boundless 
and immeasurable when compared with the apparent physical 
approximations which seem to unite us with a class of the 
latter. 

In conclusion, it is scarcely necessary to repeat that there is 
a fixed, uniform, and universal correspondence between struc- 
ture and function, or between organism and the purpose it is 
designed to fulfil. We do not know nor need to know the 
cause of this or the nature of this unity. We only know, and 
are only permitted to know, that it exists, and are not bound 
to accept the dogma of- the Materialists, that function is the 
result of organism ; nor that of their opponents, who still more 
falsely imagine results without causes, or that there can be 
functions without, organism. Truth, in this instance, lies be- 
tween extremes : — functions or faculties cannot exist without a 
given structuv s or organism, but they are not a result of that 
organism. They exist together inseparably, universally, eter- 
nally dependent on each other, but not a result of either. To 
see there must be eyes ; to hear, ears ; to walk, the organism 
of locomotion; to manifest a certain extent of intelligence 
there must be a corresponding mental organism, but there is 
no such thing proper as cause and effect, nothing but fact — 
the fact of mutual existence. 



CHAPTER II I. 

THE HUMAN CREATION. 

The human creation, like all other families or forms of being, 
is composed of a genus, which includes some half dozen or 
more species. It has been the fashion to call these permanent 
varieties, and almost every writer on ethnology has made his 
own classification, or rather has created what number he 
pleased of these " imaginary varieties." Agassiz, unquestion- 
ably the greatest of American naturalists, but unfortunately 
not much of a physiologist, and therefore unprepared to deal 
with the higher truths of ethnology, supposes several species 
of white men, and, in regard to the subordinate races, would 
doubtless multiply them ad infinitum. But at this time, or in 
the existing state of our knowledge, the number actually 
known to exist cannot be assumed beyond that already named. 
They are thus: — 1st. The Caucasian. 2d. The Mongolian. 
3d. The Malay or Oceanic. 4th. The Aboriginal American. 
5th. The Esquimaux ; and 6th. The Negro or typical African. 

The Caucasian can be confounded with no other, for though 
in some localities, climate and perhaps other causes darken the 
skin, sometimes with a deep olive tint, and extending, as with 
the Bedouins and the Jews of the Malabar coast, to almost 
black, the flowing beard (more constant than color), projecting 
forehead, oval features, erect posture and loraiy presence, 
stamp him the master man wherever found. 

The Mongolian, though less distinctive, is, however, suffi- 
ciently so, for his yellow skin, squat figure, beardless face, 



THE HUMAN CREATION. 45 

pyramidal head, and almond eyes, can scarcely be confounded 
with any other form of man. The Malay is less known, and 
therefore more difficult to describe. They are darker than the 
Mongol, though in some islands of a bright copper color, and 
indeed, vary from light olive to dark brown, and as in the case 
of the Australians, to deep black, but with no other approxi- 
mation to the Negro. 

The vast populations known under the term Papuan, and 
mainly Malay, are doubtless extensively mixed with the Ne- 
2TO, for however remote the time, or whatever the form or 
mode, real negro populations have resided in tropical Asia, 
and left behind them these remains of their former existence. 
In some islands, like New Zealand, etc., the ruling dynas- 
ties or principal families have a considerable infusion of Cau- 
casian blood, which is shown in their tall, erect form, more 
or less beard, fair complexion, and manly presence, and intel- 
lectually in their prompt and often mtelligent acceptance of 
Christianity. 

The Indian, American, or Aboriginal, needs no description ; 
suffice it to say that, from the mouth of the Columbia River to 
Cape Horn, they are the same species. It is quite possible, 
indeed probable, that some species, fomerly existing on this 
continent, have disappeared— utterly perished. The investiga- 
tions of Dr. Tschudi warrant this belief, though his nice dis- 
criminations in regard to some of the bones of the head are of 
little or no importance, as all this might be, and doubtless was, 
the result of artificial causes. But crania discovered in South- 
ern Mexico and Yucatan, as well as in Peru and Brazil, are 
sufficient evidence to warrant the belief that a still inferior race 
did once really inhabit this continent, but whether aboriginal 
or brought here by some superior race, may never be known. 
The remains of ancient structures in Yucatan, in Peru, in Mex- 
ico, in Brazil, all over the southern portion of the continent, 



46 THE HUMAN CREATION. 

show simply the traces of Caucasian intrusion. It has been 
generally supposed that Columbus and his companions were 
the first white men that ever visited this continent, but it may 
have been discovered, and to a certain extent, occupied, at 
least certain localities occupied, before even Europe itself, or 
before the period of authentic history. Any one visiting Mex- 
ico, Puebla, or other cities of Spanish America, is amazed and 
bewildered with the contrast between the vast and magnifi- 
cent structures that meet his eye, and the existing population. 
He involuntarily asks himself, " Can these people be the au- 
thors of all this art, this beauty, strength and magnificence ? 
Can these miserable, barefooted, blanketed, idle and stolid- 
looking creatures have built these palaces, these churches, these 
bridges, these mighty structures, which seem to have been built 
for eternity itself, so strong and secure are their foundations?" 
Some years hence this contrast would be still more palpable, 
and. left to themselves, a time would come when it would be 
obvious that the existing population had nothing to do with 
these structures, for the mixed blood would have disappeared, 
and there would be only the simple, unadulterated "native 
American," as discovered by the Spaniards three centuries 
ago. And we have only to apply this to the antiquities of 
America to understand its history, at all events, to understand 
the meaning of those half-buried monuments so frequently 
found on its surface. Adventurers, often, doubtless, ship- 
wrecked mariners, were cast upon the coasts of America. Pos- 
sibly in some cases before Rome was founded, or Babylon 
itself was the mighty capital of a still more mighty empire, 
these enterprising or unfortunate men found themselves un- 
disputed sovereigns of the New World. We know that 
Northmen found their way here in the eighth century, and 
doubtless they were preceded at intervals by numerous other 
Caucasians. Settling in some localities they reigned undisputed 



THE HUMAN CREATION. 47 

masters, built cities, organized governments, framed laws, and 
laid the foundations of a civilized society. But intermarry- 
ing with the natives, they were swallowed up by mongrelism, 
and, in obedience to an immutable law of physical life, doomed 
to perish, and at a given period, the white blood extinct, there 
remained nothing to denote its former existence, except the 
half-buried palaces and ruined monuments yet to be traced 
over large portions of" the continent. The Toltecs, Aztecs, 
etc., are simply the remnants of these extinct Caucasians, just 
as the present population, if left alone in Mexico, the latest 
portion of it, with Caucasian blood, would be the ruling 
force, and perhaps retain somewhat or some portion of the 
Spanish habitudes. 

The pure native mind is capable of a certain development, 
but that is fixed and determinate, and beyond which it can no 
more progress than it can alter the color of its skin or the form 
of its brain. Powhatan's empire in Virginia was undoubtedly 
aboriginal and probably called out the utmost resources and 
reached the utmost limit of the Indian mind. The Indian has, 
and does manifest to a certain extent, a capacity of mental action, 
but this is too feeble and limited to make a permanent impres- 
sion on the physical agents that surround him, and therefore he 
can have no history, for there are no materials — nothing to 
record. The term, therefore, " Indian antiquities," is a mis- 
nomer and the great congressional enterprise under the editor- 
ship of Mr. Schoolcraft an obvious absurdity. 

The Polar or Esquimaux race has been least known of all, 
and prior to the explorations of that true hero and true son of 
science, the late Dr. Kane, was scarcely known except in name. 
It is both Asiatic and American, but which continent is its 
birth-place is matter of doubt, The facilities for passing from 
one continent to the other were doubtless much greater at 
some former period than at present, and not only men but ani- 



48 THE HUMAN" CREATION. 

mals may have done so with ease. Except a few well-known 
species of animals and vegetables, which are essential to the 
well-being of the Caucasian, and which have accompanied 
him in all his migrations, each species has its own centre of 
existence, beyond or outside of which it is limited to a deter- 
minate existence. The Arctic animals are quite numerous, and 
differ widely from all others, but they are absolutely the same 
in Asia as in America, and therefore 'must have passed from 
one to the other, and man, however subordinate or inferior 
to other races endowed by nature with ample powers of loco- 
motion and migration, could meet with only trifling obstacles 
in passing from one continent to the other. This race, though 
thus far of little or no importance, is doubtless superior to the 
Negro, for the necessities of its existence, the terrible strug- 
gle for very life in those bleak and desolate regions, infer the 
possession of powers superior to those of a race whose centre 
of life is in the fertile and luxuriant tropics, where nature pro- 
duces spontaneously, and where the idle and sensual Negro 
only needs to gather these products to exist and multiply his 
kind. 

Finally, we have the Negro — last and least, the lowest in 
the scale but possibly the first in the order of Creation, for 
there are many reasons in the nature and structure of things 
that indicate, if they do not altogether warrant, the inference 
that the Negro was first and the Caucasian latest in the pro- 
gramme or order of Creation. The typical, woolly-haired Ne- 
gro may have been created in tropical Asia, and carried thence 
to Africa, as in modern times he has been carried to tropical 
America. Like other subordinate races, it never migrates, but 
the extensive traces of its former existence in Asia show be- 
yond doubt that that was either its primal home, or that it 
had been carried there by the Caucasian long anterior to the 
historic era. But it is now found in its pure state or specific 



THE HUMAN CREATION. 49 

form in Africa alone, and even here large portions of it have 
undergone extensive adulteration. Our knowledge of Africa is 
very limited and consequently very imperfect. African travel- 
ers, explorers, missionaries, etc., ignorant of the ethnology, 
of the physiology, of the true nature of the Negro, and more- 
over, bitten by modern philanthropy, a disease more loathsome 
and fatal to the moral than small-pox or plague to the physical 
nature, have been bewildered, and perverted, and rendered 
»nfit for truthful observation or useful discovery before they 
set foot on its soil or felt a single flush of its burning sun. 
With the monstrous conception that the Negro was a being 
like themselves, with the same instincts, w^ants, etc., and the 
same (latent) mental capacities, all they saw, felt, or reasoned 
upon in Africa w r as seen through this false medium, and 
therefore of little or no value. Thus Barth and Livingston 
encountering a mongrel tribe or community, with, of course, a 
certain degree or extent of civilization — the result of Cau- 
casian inervation, or perhaps the remains of a former pure 
white population, note it down and spread it before the world 
as evidence of Negro capacity, and an indication of the future 
progress of the race ! Myriads and countless myriads of white 
men have lived and died on the soil of Africa ; vast populations 
and entire nations have emigrated to that continent. At one 
time there were half a million of Christians (white) and forty 
thousand inmates of religious houses in the valley of the Nile 
alone, while three hundred Christian Bishops assembled at 
Carthage, and it will be a reasonable assumption to say that 
since the Christian era, there have been five hundred millions 
of Avhites in Africa. What has become of them ? They have 
not emigrated — have not been slaughtered in battle, nor de- 
stroyed by pestilence, nor devoured by famine, and yet these 
countless hosts, these innumerable millions, these Christian 
devotees and holy bishops have all disappeared, as utterly 

3 



50 THE HUMAN CREATION. 

perished as if the earth had opened and swallowed them np. 
With the downfall of the Roman empire, civilization receded 
from Africa, and the white population were gradually swal- 
lowed up "by mongrehsm. The Negro, being the predominant 
element,absorbed,or rather annihilated, the lesser one, and the 
result is now seen in numerous, almost countless, mixed hybrid 
or mongrel tribes and populations spread all over that conti- 
nent. It is certainly possible, indeed probable, that there are two 
or three, or more species of men, closely approximating, it is 
true, nevertheless specifically different from the woolly-haired 
or typical Negro. One of these (the Hottentots or Bushmen) 
with the true negro features but of dirty yellow color, it would 
seem almost certain must be a separate species ; but until some 
one better qualified to judge, than those hitherto relied on, 
has investigated this subject, it is only safe to assume but a 
single species, and that the other and numerous populations 
of Africa, however resembling or approximating to the typical 
Negro, are hybrids and mongrels, the effete and expiring re- 
mains of the mighty populations and imposing civilizations 
that once flourished upon its soil. There may be also other 
species besides the Mongol in Asia, and beside the Malay in 
Oceanica, and it is quite probable that some species have 
totally perished. But it is certain that those thus briefly dis- 
cussed now exist; that their location, their history, as far as 
they can be said to have a history, their physical qualities and 
mental condition, in short, their specific characters, are plainly 
marked and well understood. Nevertheless, and though all 
this belongs to the domain of fact, and it is as absurd to ques- 
tion it as it would be to question the existence of diverse spe- 
cies in any of the genera or families of the animal creation, the 
" world" generally holds to the notion of a single human race. 
It is not designed to expressly argue this point, for, to the 
American mind, it is so obvious, if not self-evident, that the 



THE HUMAN CREATION - . 51 

Human Creation is composed of diverse species, that argument 
is misplaced if not absolutely absurd. The European people 
rarely see the Negro or other species of men, and therefore tho 
notion of a single human race or species (with them) is natural 
enough, indeed a mental necessity. Ethnologists — men of 
vast erudition, of noble intellect and honest and conscientious 
intentions — have devoted their powers to this subject, and 
volume upon volume has been published to demonstrate the 
assumption of a single race. Buffon, Blumenbach, Tiedemann, 
Prichard, even Cuvier himself, have given in their adherence 
to this dogma, or rather it should be said have set out with the 
assumption of a single race and collected a vast amount of 
material — of fact or presumed fact — to demonstrate its sup- 
posed truth. Nor is it an easy matter to explode their sophis- 
tries or to disprove their assumptions. With great and admitted 
claims to scientific acquirement and powers of reasoning, they 
combine undoubted honesty of intention and seemingly careful 
and patient investigation, and the amount or extent of evi- 
dence adduced, the elaborate and mighty array of fact, of 
learned and imposing authority appealed to, and the fatiguing 
if not unwarrantable argument put forward, made it, and still 
make it difficult to reply to them or to disprove their assump- 
tions. Any question, no matter what its nature, or however 
deficient in the elements of truth, still admits of argument, and 
falsehood may often lead astray the reason even when the 
judgment itself is convinced to the contrary. And these Eu- 
ropean advocates of the dogma of a single race have such a 
boundless field for discussion, can so bewilder and fatigue the 
reason as well as pervert the imagination by their plausible 
arguments, drawn from the analysis of animal life, that it is 
not wonderful they should lead astray the popular mind ; nor 
is it surprising that those among us claiming to be men of 
science should bow to their authority, for though common sense 



52 THE HUMAN CREATION. 

rejects their arguments, there are few of sufficient mental inde- 
pendence to withstand that authority, when backed up by 
such an imposing array of distinguished names. But the 
strong common sense that distinguishes our people will not 
be, indeed, cannot be, deceived on this subject. The American 
or the Southern knows that the Negro is a Negro, and is not 
a Caucasian, just as clearly, absolutely and unmistakably as he 
knows that black is black and is not white, that a man is a 
man and is not a woman — that a pigeon is a pigeon and is not 
a robin — or a shad a shad and not a salmon. He sees negro 
parents have negro offspring; that Indians have Indian off- 
spring ; and that whites have white offspring, " each after its 
kind," with the same regularity, uniformity and perfect cer- 
tainty that is witnessed in all other forms of existence. There 
is not a white man or woman in the Union who, if told of 
such a thing as white parents with negro offspring, or negroes 
with white offspring, would believe it, even if sworn to by a 
million of witnesses. Such a belief or such a conception would 
be as monstrous, and indeed impossible, as to suppose that 
robins had begotten pigeons or horses asses. And the con- 
stant witnessing of this — this undeviating and perpetual order 
in the economy of animal life, demonstrates the specific char- 
acter of the Negro beyond doubt or possible mistake. Irish- 
men, Germans, Frenchmen, etc., come here, settle down, be- 
come citizens, and their offspring born and raised on American 
soil differ in no appreciable or perceptible manner from other 
Americans. But Negroes may have been brought here three 
centuries ago, and their offspring of to-day is exactly as it was 
then, as absolutely and specifically unlike the American as 
when the race first touched the soil and first breathed the air 
of the New World. It is not intended, as already observed, 
to argue this matter, for it is a palpable and unavoidable fact 
that Negroes are a separate species ; and though in succeeding 



THE HUMAN CREATION, 53 

chapters of this work the specific qualities are examined in 
detail, these detailed demonstrations are merely designed to 
present the physical differences in order to determine the 
moral relations, and not by any means to demonstrate a fact 
ahvays palpable to the senses. Even those foolish people, dis- 
posed to pervert terms or play upon words — to admit the fact, 
thus palpable, but ready to confound and distort the reason 
by the application or use of false terms, cannot avoid the inevi 
table conclusion of distinct species. To conceal or keep out 
of sight this truth, some have thus admitted these every day 
seen and unmistakable specific differences in dividing races, but 
a silly as strange perversity has prompted them to use the term 
"permanent varieties" instead of "species," as if white and black 
were variations and not specialties. It is a fact, an existing, 
unalterable, demonstrable, and unmistakable fact, that the 
Negro is specifically different from ourselves — a fact uniform 
and invariable, which has accompanied each generation, and 
under every condition of circumstances, of climate, social con- 
dition, education, time and accident, from the landing at James- 
town to the present day. The Naturalist, reasoning alone on 
this basis of Fact, says, that which has been uniform and undi- 
viating for three hundred years, in all kinds of climate and 
under all kinds of circumstances, in a state of " freedom" or 
condition of " slavery," under the burning Equator and amid 
the snows of Canada, without change or symptom of change, 
must have been tb us three thousand years ago. And he rea- 
sons truly, f'/r the excavations of Champolion and others de- 
monstrate the specific character of this race four thousand 
years ago, with as absolute and unmistakable certainty as it is 
now actually demonstrated to the external sense of the present 
generation. And the Naturalist, reasoning still further on this 
basis of fact, says, "that which has existed four thousand 
years, without the slightest change or modification, which in 



54 THE HUMAN CREATION. 

all kinds of climate and under every condition of circumstances 
preserves its integrity and transmits, in the regular and nor- 
mal order, to each succeeding generation the exact and com- 
plete type of itself, must have been thus at the beginning, and 
when the existing order was first called into being by the 
Almighty Creator." And contemplating the subject from this 
stand-point, and reasoning from analogy, or exactly as we do 
in respect to other and all other forms of existence, the conclu- 
sion is irresistible and unavoidable that the several human 
races or species originally came into being exactly as they now 
exist, as we know they have existed through all human experi- 
ence, and without a re-creation, must continue to exist so long 
as the world itself lasts, or the existing order remains. But a 
large portion of the " world" believe that the Bible teaches 
the descent of all mankind from a single pair, and consequently 
that there must have been a supernatural interposition at some 
subsequent period, which changed the human creation into its 
actual and existing form of being. And if there has been, at 
any time a special revelation made to man, and supernatural 
interposition in regard to other things, then this alteration or 
re-creation of separate species is no more irrational or improb- 
able than other things pertaining to that revelation, and which 
are universally assented to by the religious world. A revela- 
tion is necessarily supernatural — that is, in direct contradiction 
to the normal order ; but it may be said that the Creator is 
not the slave of His own laws, and in His immaculate wisdom 
and boundless power might see fit to change the order of the 
human creation; and certainly the same Almighty power which 
took the Hebrews over the Red Sea on dry land, that saved a 
pair of all living things in the ark of Noah, or dispersed the 
builders of Babel, could, with equal^ease, reform, or re-create 
human' life, and in future ordain that instead of one there 
should be several species of men. This is a matter, however, 



THE HUMAN CREATION. 55 

in regard to which the author does not assume to decide, to 
question, to venture an opinion, or even to hazard a conjecture. 
It is clearly and absolutely beyond the reach of human intelli- 
gence, and therefore not within the province of legitimate 
enquiry. The Almighty has, in His infinite wisdom and bound- 
less beneficence, hidden from us many things, a knowledge of 
which would doubtless injure us, and the origin of the human 
races belongs to this catalogue. Men may labor to investigate 
it, to tear aside the veil the Creator has drawn about it, to 
unlock the mystery in which He has shrouded it, and after mil- 
lions of years thus appropriated, come back to the starting- 
point, the simple, palpable, unavoidable truth. They exist, 
but why 01* wherefore, whither they came or whence they go, 
is beyond the range of human intelligence. We only know, 
and are only permitted to know, that the several species now 
known to exist have been exactly as at present in their phys- 
ical natures and intellectual capacities, through all human ex- 
perience and without a supernatural interposition or re-creation, 
must continue thus through countless ages, and as long as the 
existing: order of creation itself continues. This we know 
beyond doubt or possible mistake, while, whether it was thus 
at the beginning, or changed by a supernatural interposition 
at some subsequent period, is now, and always must be, left to 
conjecture. Those who interpret the Book of Genesis, or who 
believe that the Book of Genesis teaches the origin of the hu- 
man family from a single pair, will, of course believe that the 
Creator subsequently changed them into their present form, 
while those who do not thus interpret the Bible will believe, 
with equal confidence perhaps, that they were created thus at 
the beginning. It is not, nor could it be of the slightest ben- 
efit to us to really and truly know the truth of this matter. 
All that is essential to our welfare we already know, or may 
know, if we properly apply the faculties with which the Cre- 



qQ the human creation. 

ator has so beneficently endowed us. We only need to apply 
these faculties — to investigate the question — to study the dif- 
ferences existing among the general species of men, and com- 
pare their natures and capabilities with our own, to under- 
stand our true relations with them, and thus to secure our 
own happiness as well as their well-being, when placed in jux- 
taposition with them. All this is so obvious, and the remote 
and abstract question of origin so hypothetical and entirely 
non-essential, that it seems impossible that intelligent and con- 
scientious men would ever seek to raise an issue on it, or that 
they would overlook the great practical duties involved in the 
question and engage in a visionary and unprofitable discussion 
about that of which they neither do nor can know anything 
whatever. Nevertheless, some few persons seem to be especi- 
ally desirous to provoke an issue on this matter, not only with 
science but with common sense, and a certain reverend and 
rather distinguished gentleman has publicly and repeatedly de- 
clared "that the doctrine of a single human race underlies the 
whole fabric of religious belief, and if it is rejected, Christianity 
will be lost to mankind !" What miserable folly, if nothing 
worse, is this ! It is a virtual declaration that we must believe 
or pretend to believe, what we know to be a lie, in order to 
preserve what we believe to be a truth. The existence of differ- 
ent species of men belongs to the category of physical fact — a 
thing subject to the decision of the senses, and belief neither 
has nor can have anything to do with the matter. It is true, 
the reverend gentleman in question may shut his eyes and re- 
main in utter ignorance of the fact, or rather of the laws gov- 
erning the fact, and while thus ignorant, may believe, or pre- 
tend to believe, that widely different things constitute the same 
thing — that white and black are identical — that white 
parents had at some remote time and in some strange and 
unaccountable manner given birth to Negro offspring ; but 



THE HUMAN CREATION. 51 

what right has he to say, to those who are conscious of the 
fact of different species, and who know, moreover, that negroes 
could no more originate from white parentage than they could 
from dogs or cats, that they shall stultify themselves and 
dishonestly pretend to believe otherwise, on pain of eternal 
reprobation, or what he doubtless considers such, the loss of 
Christianity to the world ? It is not the desire of the writer to 
either reconcile the merits of science with those peculiar inter- 
pretations of the Bible, or to exhibit any contradictions with 
those interpretations. An undoubting believer himself in the 
great doctrines of Christianity, he finds no difficulty whatever 
in this respect, and would desire to simply state the facts or 
what he knows to be truth, and leave the reader to form his 
own conclusions. But the seemingly predetermined design of 
some to make an issue on this matter, to appeal to a supposed 
popular bigotry and fanaticism in order to* conceal the most 
vital and most stupendous truth of modern times — a truth un- 
derlying all our sectional difficulties, and which, truly appre- 
hended by the mind of the masses, will instantly explode those 
difficulties — renders it an imperative duty to expose the folly 
and sophistry of those who strive to keep it out of sight. 
They assume that the Bible teaches the origin of all mankind 
from a single pair — that the Mongol, Indian, Xegro, etc., with 
the same origin, have the same nature as the white man, and 
consequently have the same natural rights, and that we owe 
to them the same duties that we owe to ourselves or to our own 
race. And, moreover, they proclaim a belief in this assump- 
tion as essential to salvation, or, in other words, that if it be 
rejected Christianity will disappear from the world. It need 
not be repeated that the writer will not condescend to argue a 
self-evident, actually existing, every-dny palpable and unavoid- 
able physical fact, or insult the reader's understanding by pre- 
senting proofs to show that the Negro is specifically different 

3* 



58 THE HUMAN CREATION. 

from himself — that is a matter beyond the province of ra- 
tional discussion, and entirely within the domain of the senses; 
yet, as already observed, in the subsequent chapters of this 
work the extent of these differences separating whites and 
blacks will be demonstrated, their physical differences and 
approximations shown, in order to determine their moral 
relations and social adaptations. But the assumption that 
belief in the dogma of a single human race or species is vital 
to the preservation of Christianity needs to be exposed, as 
it is in reality as monstrous in morals as stupid and absurd in 
fact. We cannot believe that which we know to be untrue, 
and to affect such belief, however good the motive may seem, 
must necessarily debauch and demoralize the whole moral 
structure. There are many things — such as the belief in the 
doctrine of election, original sin, of justification by faith, 
that admit of belief — honest, earnest, undoubting belief — for 
they are abstractions and purely matters of faith that can never 
be brought to the test of physical demonstration, or to the 
standard of material fact, but the question of race — the fact of 
distinct races or rather the existence of species of Cauca- 
sian, Mongols, Negroes, etc., are physical facts, subject to the 
senses, and it is beyond the control of the will to refuse assent 
to their actual presence. Can a man, by taking thought, add 
a cubit to his stature ? Can he believe himself something else 
— a woman, a dog, or that he does not exist — that black is 
white, or that red is yellow, or that the Negro is a white man? 
It is possible to deceive and delude ourselves, and believe or 
think that we believe many things which our interest, our 
prejudices, and our caprices prompt us to believe, but they 
must be things of an abstract nature, where there are no phys- 
ical tests to embarrass us or to compel the will to bow to that 
fixed and immutable standard of truth which the Eternal has 
planted in the very heart of things, and which otherwise the 



THE HUMAN CREATION. 59 

laws of the mental organism absolutely force us to recognize. 
But the existence of distinct species of men does not belong to 
this category. It is fact, a palpable, immediate, demonstrable 
and nnescapable fact. We know, and we cannot avoid know- 
ing, that the negro is a negro and is not a white man, and 
therefore we cannot believe, however much we may strive to 
do so, that he is the same being that we are, or in other words, 
that all mankind constitute a single race or species. All that 
is possible or permissible is to make liars and hypocrites of 
ourselves — to pretend to believe in a thing that we do not and 
cannot believe in — to force this hypocrisy and pretended belief 
on others who may happen to have confidence in our honesty 
and respect for our ability; and finally, as a salve for our out- 
raged conscience, to deceive ourselves with the notion that our 
motives are good, and the end justifies the means. 

But the advocates of the European theory of a single race 
are faced by other difficulties, which are quite as unavoid- 
able as those thus briefly glanced at. They demand that the 
world shall believe in the dogma of a single race, but not one 
among them will act upon it m practice, or convince others of 
their sincerity by living up to their avowed belief. If the Ne- 
gro had descended from the same parentage, or, except in 
color merely, was the same being as ourselves, then there 
could be no reason for refusing to amalgamate with him as with 
the several branches of our race. But on the contrary, the 
reverend and distinguished gentleman who has ventured to 
declare that the belief that the Negro is a being like ourselves, 
is essential to Christianity, would infinitely prefer the death of : 
his daughter to that of marriage with the most accomplished 
and most pious Negro in existence ! If he believed in his own 
assertions in regard to this matter, then it would be his first 
and most imperative duty, as a Christian minister, to set an 
example to others, to labor night and day to elevate this (in 



60 THE HUMAN CREATION. 

that case) wronged and outraged race— indeed, to suffer every 
personal inconvenience, even martyrdom itself, in the per- 
formance of a duty so obvious and necessary. And when 
this theory was at last reduced to practice, and all the existing 
distinctions and " prejudices" against the Negro were obliter- 
ated, and the four millions of Negroes amalgamated with the 
whites, society would be rewarded by the increased morality 
and purity that would follow an act of such transcendent jus- 
tice. But will any one believe in such a result — that, reducing 
to practice the belief, or pretended belief of a single race, will 
or would benefit American society ? No, indeed ; on the con- 
trary, every one knows — even the wildest and most perverted 
abolitionist knows — that to reduce this dogma to practice, to 
honestly live out this pretended belief, to affiliate with these 
negroes, would result in the absolute destruction of American 
society. Nothing, therefore, can be more certain than the 
hypocrisy of those who pretend to believe in this single-race 
doctrine, for it need not be repeated, that they do not and can- 
not believe in it in reality. But why should they deem this 
absurd doctrine essential to their interpretation of the Bible ? 
That the Almighty Creator subsequently changed the order 
of the human creation is in entire harmony with the univer- 
sally received history of the Christian Revelation. All the 
Christian sects of the day admit the doctrine of miracles, or 
supernatural interposition, down to the time of the Apostles, 
and the largest of all (the Roman Catholics) credit this inter- 
position at the present day, and therefore those ready to re- 
cognize it in such numerous instances, many, too, of relatively 
trifling importance, but, determined to reject it in this matter 
of races, are only imitating their brethren of old, and straining 
at gnats while swallowing camels with the greatest ease. 
To many persons the great doctrines of the Christian faith 
carry with them innate and irresistible proof of their divine 



THE HUMAN CREATION. 61 

origin, but the professional teachers of theology depend mainly 
upon supernatural interposition to convince the world of its 
truth, and y«;t by a strange and unaccountable perversity, 
some of them would reject it in the most important, or, at all 
events one of the most important instances in which it ever 
did or ever could occur. But will the sensible and really con- 
scientious Christian priest or layman venture to persist in 
forcing this assumption, this palpable, demonstrable, unmis- 
takable falsehood, that the single race-dogma is essential to the 
preservation of Christianity, upon the public ? If he does, 
and if it is accepted by those who look upon him as a teacher, 
then it is certain that he will inflict infinite mischief on the 
cause of Christianity. To assume that all mankind have white 
skins, or straight hair, or any other specific feature of our own 
race, involves no greater absurdity, indeed, involves the exact 
absurdity, that the assumption of a single human species does. 
If it were assumed that we must stultify ourselves, and believe, 
or pretend to believe, that all mankind have white skins, or 
Christianity would be lost to the world, there is not a single 
man in this Republic that would not reject such an assumption 
with scorn and contempt. White and black are, of course, 
specialties, but no more so than (as will hereafter be shown) 
all the other things that constitute the negro being, and 
therefore the assumption put forward substantially and indeed 
exactly, is thus : We must believe that whites, Indians, Ne- 
groes, etc., have the same color, or the whole fabric of 
Christianity will be overthrown and lost to mankind ! 

But enough — all Americans know — for they cannot avoid 
knowing — that negroes are negroes and specifically different 
from themselves ; they know, moreover, that they differed just 
as widely when first brought to this continent, and all who 
understand the simplest laws of organization know that they 
must always remain thus different from ourselves, and therefore 



g 2 THE HUMAN CREATION. 

they know that they were made so by the act and will of the 
Almighty Creator, while when, or how, or why they are thus, 
m beyond the province of human enquiry, and of no manner 
of importance whatever. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

The white or Caucasian is the only historic race — the 
race which is alone capable of those mental manifestations 
which, written or unwritten, leave a permanent impression 
behind. What was its first or earliest condition upon the 
earth ? This, except the meagre account given by Moses, 
is unknown, nor is it of much importance that it should be 
known, for though it never was nor could be savage or bar- 
barous, as these terms are understood in modem times, still 
its intellectual acquisitions were doubtless so limited that if 
really known to us, they would be of little or no service. 
Moses scarcely attempts any description of social life before 
the time of Abraham, and that then presented does not differ 
very materially from what exists in the same locality at the 
present day. The pastoral habitudes of Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob, the sale of Joseph to the Ishmaelites by his brethren, 
his purchase in Egypt, and sudden exaltation at the court of 
the Egyptian Monarch, is an almost exact counterpart of 
scenes witnessed now, and with little varieties in the same 
lands, for the last four thousand years. The starting-point — ■ 
the locality where the race first came into being, is equally 
hidden as the time or period of its creation. Biblical writ- 
ers have usually supposed somewhere in Asia Minor, on the 
banks of the Euphrates, while ethnologists are inclined to be- 
lieve that the high table lands of Thibet and Hindoo Koosh 
may have been the cradle of the race. Nor is a knowledge of 



64 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

this material, or indeed of the slightest consequence, except as 
an aid in determining its true centre of existence — that is, its 
physical adaptation or specific affinities for a certain locality. 
But this is determined by experience ; and it is demonstrated 
beyond doubt that while the elaborate and relatively perfect 
structure of the Caucasian Man enables him to resist all ex- 
ternal agencies, and to exist in all climates capable of support- 
ing animal life, he can only till the soil or perform manual 
labor in the temperate zones. It is, therefore, immaterial 
when or where he first came into being, or what was the 
starting point of the race — its centre of existence is alike in 
all the great temperate latitudes of Asia, Africa, Europe, and 
America. The history of the race may be said to be divided 
into three great cycles or distinct periods ; all, however, con- 
necting with each other, and doubtless mainly resembling each 
other in their essential nature, however widely different in 
their external manifestation. The first period, beginning with 
its actual existence on the earth, may be said to terminate in 
the era of authentic history. The second, or historic era, may 
be assumed as extending to the overthrow of the Roman 
Empire by the so-called northern barbarians, or, perhaps, to 
what is usually termed the dark ages. And finally, there is 
another grand cycle in human destiny, which, beginning with 
the restoration of learning, comes down to and includes our 
own times. In regard to the first, we actually know little of 
it, for, leaving out of view the Sacred Scriptures, we have 
only a few imperfect glimpses of the actual life of the count- 
less millions that preceded the historic period. What little 
knowledge we have depends on tradition and mythology, 
sometimes, perhaps, true enough, but the greater portion 
thus transmitted to our times we know is false, because con- 
ditions are assumed that are in contradiction with the laws 
that govern our animal being. If the race, however, was 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 65 

created in Asia, we know that portions of it migrated to 
Africa, at a very remote period ; indeed, leaving the Bible out 
of view, the first knowledge we have of its existence, or the 
earliest traces of its existence, is in Africa. Caucasian tribes 
or communities entered the valley of the Nile possibly before 
the delta of the lower country was sufficiently hardened to 
admit of cultivation, as they evidently occupied localities con- 
siderably removed from the outlet of that great river. These 
early adventurers conquered the aboriginal population, subjected 
them to their control, compelled them to labor for them, built 
magnificent cities, temples, palaces, founded a mighty Empire 
and advanced, to a certain extent, in civilization. But wealth 
and luxury, with their effeminate consequences, probably, too, 
injustice and crime in the rulers, and certainly, and worst 
of all, interunion and affiliation with the conquered races, 
tempted purer and hardier branches of the race to invade 
them, and indeed the delicious climate and fertile soil must 
have always tempted Caucasian tribes into the Valley of the 
Nile, from the earliest periods, and whenever they felt them- 
selves strong enough to attack the existing community. Of 
course we can only deal in conjecture in regard to this matter, 
but it is probable that numerous invasions took place, each 
passing through much the same course as its predecessors. 
First came conquest, then the erection of a mighty Empire, 
followed by a grand civilization ; then came effeminacy, affilia- 
tion with the subject races, debauchment and debility inviting 
a new conquest by pure Caucasians, and they, in their turn, 
going through the same round of glory and decay, of con- 
quest and degradation. Such seems to have been the condition 
of Egypt when the Romans invaded it, and made it a province 
of that great Empire. The effete remains of these Egyptian 
populations afterward, became known to the Roman writers, 
and, to a certain extent, may be said still to exist. The great 



66 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

Asiatic empires were doubtless similar to the Egyptian, except 
in respect to the debauchment of blood. The Assyrians, Per- 
sians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Hebrews, etc., each in their 
turn, were conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, but 
their downfall, in one essential respect, differed widely from 
those of Africa. They were pure, unmixed Caucasians, for at 
that time the Mongol element was unknown in that portion of 
Asia, and the Negro, except a few household servants, never 
existed on that continent. The Mongolian race was first 
known about five hundred years anterior to the Christian 
Era, and whether originally it existed in a more northern 
region, or had not reached a full development as regards num- 
bers, can not be known, on account of our limited knowledge 
of the earth at that time. The old Caucasian populations of 
Asia knew nothing of it, and had no admixture of Mongolic 
blood. But all is conjecture, mystery, doubt and uncertainty, in 
regard to these ancient and extinct Empires. We know that 
they existed — that they were white men — beings like ourselves 
— our own ancestors, with the same wants, the same instincts, 
in short, the same nature that we have, and therefore, in the 
main, acted, as we do now. Of course we call them heathens, 
pagans, savages, barbarians, etc., but were they thus ? 

In the modern times there are no white barbarians or heath- 
ens. In all modern history, wherever found, white men are 
much the same ; why, then, should it not have been so always ? 
The fanatic Jew called all others gentiles, savages ; the super- 
cilious Greek called even their Roman conquerors barbarians ; 
even the manly and liberal Roman did not rise above this fool- 
ish bigotry, and not only called the Gauls, Britons, Germans, 
etc., barbarians, but reduced them to slavery, as if they were 
inferior beings. We witness the same ignorance and folly in 
our own enlightened times. The Englishman believes that the 
English are alone truly Christian and civilized ; the French- 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 67 

man honestly believes that La Belle France is at the head of 
modern civilization ; even the advanced and liberal American 
Democrat thinks, and perhaps correctly, that the Americans 
alone are truly civilized ; while some among ns would exclude 
all from the privilege of citizenship who happen to be born 
elsewhere, as rigidly as the Jew did the uncircumcised Gentile 
or the Moslem the dog of a Christian. Is not this notion of 
a outside barbarians," therefore, the result of ignorance, or 
foolish egotism, without sense or reason? Some nations or 
communities were doubtless advanced more than others in 
ancient times, as at present, but in the main the race must 
have approximated to the same common standard we wit- 
ness now. If it is said that in early times the obstacles in the 
way of frequent intercourse prevented this general approxi- 
mation to a common standard of enlightenment, it may be re- 
plied that the same obstacles would also prevent a wide depar- 
ture, and when we know that they had the same wants, the 
same instincts, the same tendencies, etc., the conclusion seems 
unavoidable that no nation or community could at any time in 
history assume, with any justice, that others were barbarians, 
or that they alone were civilized. The traditions and imper- 
fect knowledge which we have hitherto possessed in respect 
to these long-buried populations, may, perhaps, be replaced by 
that which is almost or quite as reliable as written history itself. 
Within a few years past a class of men have sprung up who, 
excavating the dead remains of long forgotten empires, promise 
revelations that will bring us face to face with the buried gen- 
erations that we now only know through the dim perspec- 
tive of uncertain tradition. Champolion, Belzoni, Rawlinson, 
Layard and their companions have already made discoveries 
in Egypt and Nineveh that open to our minds much of the 
social condition and daily life of those remote times, and future 
explorations, it is probable, will give us nearly as accurate a 



68 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

knowledge as we have of those embraced within the cycle of 
authentic history. 

The next great period in the history of the race — the his- 
toric era — is supposed to be entirely within the province of real 
knowledge. It begins with the history of the Greeks — not 
the symbolic but the real — that grand and glowing intellec- 
tualism which, in many respects, may be said to equal the in- 
tellectual development of our own times. The history of 
Greece and Rome is in truth the history of the race, of the 
world, of mankind. There were cotemporary nations of great 
power, extent and cultivation, but the Greeks and Romans, ' 
and the subject or servile populations that acknowledged their 
supremacy, made up the larger portion of the race. It is true 
the Persians were then pure Caucasians, and, in respect to 
numbers, largely surpassed the Greeks, but while they did not 
differ much in their general character, they were on the de- 
cline before the Greeks had reached their full national devel- 
opment. The latter always referred to Egypt as the source 
of their civilization, but it is more probable that they borrowed 
from Asia most of those things supposed to be of foreign 
origin. It is, however, quite possible that the earliest civiliza- 
tion was developed in Africa, that it receded from thence to 
Asia, as we know it afterwards did from the latter to Europe, 
and as we now witness it, passing to America. But what is 
civilization ? It is, or it may be defined as, the result of intel- 
lectual manifestation. A nation or people who have most 
deeply studied and understood the laws of nature or the nature 
of things, and applied their knowledge to their own welfare, 
are the most civilized or we might say, in a word, that the 
nation that has the most knowledge is the most civilized. The 
Greeks, certainly, surpassed all cotemporary nations in the 
most essential of all knowledge, yet even this seems to have 
been rather a thing of chance than otherwise. Political intel- 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 69 

ligence, or a knowledge of men's social relations to each 
other, is the most vital they can possess. The Greeks may 
be said both to have possessed this knowledge and to have 
been entirely deficient in it. Athens, with thirty thousand 
citizens all recognized as political equals, was a Democracy, 
but this so-called Democracy, with, perhaps, a hundred thou- 
sand slaves, was a burlesque on a democratic government. 
The Helots of Greece, the servile and subject population of 
which history gives no account, except to refer to them, were 
white men — men with all the natural capacities of Socrates, 
Demosthenes, or Alcibiades, but the Greek orators and writers 
of the day never even seemed to imagine that they had 
any rights whatever. They had much the same relation to 
the Greeks that the Saxons had to the Normans, that the 
Irish have to the English, and yet with all their political 
enlightenment and high intellectual development, the Greeks 
gave them no rights, and treated them as different and subor- 
dinate beings. The notion, therefore, taught in our schools, 
that the Greeks were the authors of political liberty, is unsound 
— they neither practised nor understood liberty, and the exter- 
nal forms mistaken for democracy had no necessary connection 
with it. Aristotle could not form even a conception of a polit- 
ical system that did not rest upon slavery, and this was doubt- 
less the general condition of the Greek mind. It was merely 
accidental that the Greek States assumed a democratic form, 
or rather approximated to a democratic form ; but while they 
were utterly ignorant of individual relations they certainly had 
clear views of the relations of states and the duties that inde- 
pendent communities owe to each other. The Asiatic nations 
seem to have had no conception wha ever of these duties — 
conquest or slavery were the only ilternatives. A nation 
must conquer or be conquered — a dynasty must destroy all 
others, or expect to fall itself — and the Asiatic character still 



YO HISTOEICAL SUMMARY. 

partakes Largely of these habitudes. Except, therefore, in the 
mere externals or outward arrangements of political society, 
the Greeks can hardly be said to have done anything for polit- 
ical liberty or to advance political science. The Romans did 
more — vastly more — but they had little or no conception of 
democracy or of individual liberty. The proud boast," I am 
a Roman citizen," unlike the idea of the American democrat, 
partook of the spirit of a British aristocrat of our own days, 
claiming the privileges of his order. The men who founded 
the city of Rome, though doubtless fillibusters and adventur- 
ers, perhaps even outcasts of the neighboring populations, were 
assumed to be superior to the later emigrants, and their de- 
scendants especially claimed exclusive privileges. And when 
Rome expanded into a mighty empire and ruled the world, 
the senatorial order ruled the empire — at all events, until 
Ca?sar crossed the Rubicon and seized the supreme power. 
The change from a republic to an empire had little or no bear- 
ing upon the question of liberty, for the condition of the great 
body of the people remained the same. Rome conquered all, 
or nearly all, the then known world, for, except the Persians, 
and perhaps some few populations in the far North, the whole 
Caucasian race recognized the Romans as their rulers. The 
Parthians, so often waging desperate war with the Romans, 
were doubtless a mixed people, something like the modern 
Turks, and very possibly their ancestors. Following the rude 
code of early times, the Romans enslaved the conquered popu- 
lations. All the prisoners of war were deemed to have for- 
feited their lives, and were parceled out among the Roman 
conquerors, while the rural populations were compelled to pay 
tribute to the Roman civil officers. It is quite probable that 
the Romans conquered some of the inferior races, but except 
the Numidians, Lybians, Ethiopians, etc., of Africa, Roman 
writers are silent on the subject. It has been said that the 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 71 

history of the Romans was the history of the Caucasian race, 
and that was the history of the world. This is literally true, 
for though we cannot suppose that the conquered populations 
were the miserable barbarians that the Roman writers represent 
them to have been, Rome was the most advanced portion of 
the race, and therefore the embodiment of its civilization and 
intellectual life. At this moment Paris represents all France ; 
and the city of Rome bore a somewhat similar relation' to the 
populations that composed the empire, however distant they 
may have been from the capital. It was not an unusual thing 
for the same general that commanded in Britain or that had 
conquered in Gaul, to administer the government of the Afri- 
can provinces or to conduct a campaign against the Persians 
on the bank of the Euphrates. And however much the vanity 
of Roman authors may have been gratified by assuming that 
they alone were civilized, it is altogether irrational to suppose 
that the conquered populations, with the same nature and same 
capacities as themselves, and moreover, in frequent and often 
intimate intercourse with themselves, could have differed 
widely or remained barbarians, even if such when conquered. 
The Romans advanced far beyond the Greeks in political 
knowledge, but with them also the state was every thing and 
the individual nothing. As with the Greeks, the great major- 
ity were slaves ; and Roman citizenship, or the rights claimed 
by a Roman citizen, was at best a special privilege ; and prior 
to the advent of Christianity, the idea of individual rights, of 
equality, of democracy, seems never to have dawned upon the 
intellectual horizon of the race. Nor did the primitive Chris- 
tians (even) accept it in theory, though they lived it out in 
practice. Their mental habits were formed under the old 
social order, and though the spirit of the new doctrine impelled 
them to live it out in practice, few, if any, ever adopted it in 
theory. Christ had said, " love each other," and " do unto 



72 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

others as you would have them do unto you," that is, " grant 
to others the rights claimed for yourselves," but while they 
often lived together, owning things in common like the mod- 
ern communists and socialists, perhaps not one in a million 
ever thought of applying their doctrines to the state, or even 
supposing for a moment that the artificial distinctions which 
separated classes could ever be altered or modified. Even the 
forced* and unnatural relation of master and slave, which neces- 
sarily violated the fundamental doctrine of their religion, was 
clung to and respected in theory, and it" needed several centu- 
ries of practice and faithful obedience to the spirit of the new 
faith before this ancient barbarism was finally obliterated from 
the Roman world. The conquest of Rome, by the so-called 
northern barbarians, was followed by an eclipse of learning — by 
a mental darkness in Western Europe at least, that is fitly enough 
denominated the dark ages. Was this irruption of the northern 
nations into Italy the true cause of this darkness ? For sev- 
eral centuries previous there had been an immense and almost 
continuous emigration from Asia, not of individuals, as we 
witness in the present day, to America, but of tribes, commu- 
nities, whole nations. History is indeed imperfect, if not 
altogether silent, in respect to the cause of these mighty migra- 
tions which so long pressed upon Europe. But there can be 
little doubt that the Mongolian race about this time changed, 
to a considerable extent, its location, and pressing down on the 
old Caucasian populations of Asia, impelled those vast masses 
to seek shelter and safety, if not homes and happiness, in Eu- 
rope. In the mighty invasions of Italy in the fifth century 
by Attila, the truth of this is certainly demonstrated. He 
himself was doubtless a white man, and so were his chiefs; but 
the mighty populations he ruled over, and which extended 
from the Danube to the frontiers of China, were mainly Mon- 
golian. But no Mongolians settled permanently in Europe — 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 73 

none but Caucasians, and except the modern Turks, none but 
pure Caucasians — and, being the same men as the Romans 
themselves, why should they be barbarians ? They were con- 
querors ; a pretty good proof that, though not so refined per- 
haps, certainly not so effeminate as the Romans had become, 
they could not have been barbarians. Other things being 
equal, the nation that has made the greatest advance in 
knowledge will be able to conquer, because it has only to 
apply its knowledge to this object to succeed. There can be 
no doubt that we ourselves surpass all the nations of our times 
in knowledge, or in our capacity to apply our knowledge to 
the purposes of material existence. Our railroads, canals, 
public works, our ship-building, commerce, etc., prove this, 
and we have only to apply this knowledge to purposes of 
offence or defence, to invade others or to defend ourselves, 
to demonstrate our immense superiority. Nevertheless, if we 
should conquer Spain, or any other ancient and effete empire, 
doubtless their writers would take their revenge in calling us 
barbarians, as indeed the poor, feeble, and adulterated hybrids 
of Mexico actually did thus represent us when in possession 
of their capital. Nothing, therefore, can be more improbable 
than the theory of Gibbon and others, that the nations that 
conquered Rome were barbarians, and that the dark ages were 
the result of that conquest. But there was a cause for the 
subsequent darkness which so long spread over the European 
world much more palpable. Christianity had become gener- 
ally accepted, and bad and ambitious men, in the then gen- 
eral ignorance of the masses of the populations, might wield 
it with stupendous effect in advancing their ambition and 
securing their own personal objects. The assumption that 
Christ had delegated a power on earth to interpret the will 
of Heaven, both as to temporal as well as religious interests, 



74 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

was enough ; of course all human investigation and mental 
activity terminated, and was denounced as impiety. 

The subordinate clergy were often, perhaps generally, faith- 
ful to the great truths transmitted by the primitive Christians, 
but, dependent on tradition, and subject to the rule of their 
sacerdotal superiors, they in vain resisted these influences, and 
these truths became in time so corrupted as scarcely to retain 
any resemblance to the original faith. It is believed that, 
except in these " dark ages," the Caucasian mind has never 
retrograded or indeed remained stationaiy. Progress is the 
law, the instinct, the necessity of the Caucasian mind, and 
however much some branches or some nations may decline, 
there is always some portion, nationality, or community, that 
embodies the wants of the race, and that moves forward in 
pursuit of that indefinite perfectability which is its specific 
and distinguishing characteristic. Bat it is easily understood 
how this might have suffered an eclipse under the circumstan- 
ces then existing. A great proportion of the so-called barba- 
rian conquerors of Rome were ignorant of Christianity, and 
when they became the converts of the conquered Romans, 
they naturally exalted their teachers as beings almost super- 
human in their superior knowledge ; and the general ignorance 
of the times favored any pretension of the priests, however 
absurd it might be. In fact a body of men claiming to be, and 
universally believed to be, the interpreters of the will of the 
Almighty, necessarily interrupted all inquiry into the taws of 
nature (the real laws of God), and though some monks them- 
selves, immured in their cells, continued to think, to experi- 
ment, to acquire knowledge, as well as in many instances to 
preserve that already acquired by others, the great mass of 
the people as well as the great body of the clergy looked upon 
everything of the kind as wicked, impious, and heretical. 
And we have only to suppose an intellectual activity and free- 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 75 

dom corresponding with our own times throughout these 
dark centuries, to realize the stupendous evil inflicted on the 
world by this priestly arrogance and ambition. 

The races, so-called,that figured most prominently during the 
period beginning with authentic history and terminating in the 
dark ages, are first, the Semitic, which included the Egyptians, 
Carthaginians, Persians, Syrians, Hebrews or Jews, Saracens, 
Arabians, etc., indeed under the term Semitic may be included 
all the Orientals, except the Parthians, who were doubtless a 
mixed people, and those northern tribes, historically known as 
Scythians, afterwards the conquerors of Egypt and the pro- 
genitors of that extraordinary military autocracy known in 
modern times by the name of Mamelukes. The second great 
branch was the Pelasgian, which included the Macedonians, 
the Romans, the Hellenic tribes, Dorians, Thracians, etc., and 
of which the Romans were for nearly two thousand years the 
main representatives. Between these great branches of the 
Caucasian — for they were both doubtless, typical Caucasians, 
though Agassiz thinks that the Semitic constituted a separate 
species — there was almost constant war, from the very begin- 
ning of history to the capture of Constantinople. The Greek 
and Trojan war was doubtless a collision of this kind — and so 
were the wars of the Greeks and Persians — the conquests of 
Alexander, which, for a time, almost annihilated the Persian 
empire — the terrible life-and-death struggle of the Romans and 
Carthaginians, and finally the invasion and conquest of Spain 
by the Arabians, with their ultimate defeat by the Franks under 
Charles Martel. Indeed, coming down to more modern times, 
we find the Crusades, when nearly all Europe, in a fit of un- 
controllable phrensy, precipitated itself on Asia; and in the col- 
lapse which folio wed, Asiatic hordes, though not exactly Semitic, 
again seeking to penetrate into Europe, and actually conquering 
the remains of the old Roman empire, in the eastern capital of 



76 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

which they are now firmly established. Historians are wont to 
magnify the results of these contests, especially the defeat of Han- 
nibal and the overthrow of the Carthaginians by the Romans, 
and the defeat of the Arabians by the Franks, as of vital import- 
ance to the world and the best interests of mankind ; but it is 
quite possible that they over-estimate these things, especially 
the victory of the Romans over the Carthaginians. They were 
both of the same species of men, both branches of the Cauca- 
sian, with the same nature, the same tendencies, and, under 
the same circumstances, the same beings. The Carthaginians 
were, for the time, highly civilized. They were the heirs of 
the Egyptian and Asiatic civilizations, as Rome was of that of 
the Greeks. They were a great commercial people, with 
boundless wealth, science, arts, manufactures, everything but 
a warlike spirit ; while Rome, at the time without commerce, 
poor and torn by factions, was a mere military aristocracy, and 
the capital itself little more than a military encampment. 
Why, then, should the defeat of the former have been bene- 
ficial to the progress of the race, or to the general interests of 
mankind ? 

In regard to the defeat of the Arabians by the Franks, the 
case is altogether different. They were the same species, and 
doubtless, at that time, more advanced than the Europeans, 
but they were Mohammedans, and in the full flush of enthusi- 
asm for their faith, which they invariably propagated by the 
sword. And if they had overrun Europe as they did Asia, 
somewhat similar results would doubtless have followed, for 
though it is altogether improbable, indeed, in view of its 
Divine origin, impossible, that they could have exterminated 
the Christian religion, they would have done it and the gen- 
eral cause of civilization incalculable injury. But both of 
these great branches of the race have long since disappeared 
from history. The Semitic element can scarcely be said to exist 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 77 

at all. In Africa it is adulterated by the blood of the Negro, 
and perhaps the blood of some race or races not so low in the 
scale as the Negro. In Asia it is mixed with the Mongolian 
blood, and though the Arab and Persian populations of our 
day are mainly white, there is more or less taint pervading all 
the Asiatic communities. The great Pelasgian branch has 
long since disappeared and been swallowed up in the more 
modern branches of the race, and though the modern Italian 
claims to be, and doubtless is, the lineal descendant of the 
ancient Roman, no portions of the race are wider apart than 
the ancient Roman and his modern descendant, a striking 
proof that accidental consanguinity does not affect the univer- 
sality of the race. 

The last great cycle of history, commencing with the Refor- 
mation, comes down to and includes our own times. It is 
quite unnecessary to dwell upon it, as all intelligent persons 
have much the same view of it. With the downfall of the 
Roman empire, however, new varieties of the Caucasian, or, 
as historians have termed them, new races, have emerged into 
vuew, and in their turn struggled for the empire of the world. 
The hordes that, under Alaric and other leaders, overran 
Italy, were generally known as Goths, a generic term that is 
applied to great numbers of very different people, though, of 
course, all were white men, and therefore of the same race or 
species. But after varying fortunes, and passing through 
numerous mutations, all these races have subsided into several 
well-marked and well-known divisions or families now existing. 
There are — First. The Celts — including a large portion of the 
French, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, and the remains of the 
primitive people of the British Islands. Second. The Teutonic 
or German, including the Germans of all kinds, the Swiss, the 
mythical Anglo-Saxon and perhaps the Danes, the Scandina- 
vians, etc. Third. The Sclavonians, embracing the Russians, 



70 hlSTUKKAL SUMJUAKY. 

Poles, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, etc. There are some few 
populations that, either in language or historical facts, have 
little or no connection with those enumerated. These are the 
modern Hungarians, the European Turks, the Circassians, etc, 
They are, however, Caucasians: even the Turks and Circas- 
sians are, in our times, pure or mainly pure Caucasians. 
Finally there remain our own people, the offspring of every 
country and of every variety of the race, and as the more the 
blood is crossed the more energetic and healthy the product 
or progeny, the American people should become, as it doubt- 
less will become, the most powerful and the most civilized 
people in existence. 

Such, briefly considered, is an imperfect summary or outline 
of the history of our race, the only race that has a history or 
that is capable of those mental manifestations whose record 
constitutes history. It is a favorite theory of most historians 
to represent the mental development of the race as divided 
into distinct categories, not as the author has ventured, into 
historic periods, but into different phases of intellectual man- 
ifestation. They have supposed that men (white men) were 
first hunters and lived wholly by the chase — that after a while 
they became shepherds, and lived on their herds or flocks — 
that then they made another advance and became cultivators, 
and finally artisans, merchants, etc. Each of these conditions, 
it has been supposed, were dependent on, or were associated 
with, a corresponding mental development. The hunter had 
intellect enough to run down the stag or wit sufficient to entrap 
the game necessary for his support, but had not sufficient 
capacity to take care of his flocks or sense sufficient to till the 
earth ! This notion has doubtless arisen from observing the 
habits of the subordinate races of men, though it is quite 
possible that our own race has passed through some such 
stages as those suggested. But there has never been any vari- 



Jii&iuiniiAij DimmAui 



ations in its actual intellectual powers. The mental capacities 
given it in the morning of creation were just what they are 
now, and what they will be millions of years hence. Thus is 
explained the (to many persons) seeming anomaly that in the 
very dawn of history there were men like Homer, Plato, So- 
crates, Pythagoras, and others, with a breadth and depth of 
intellect corresponding to the most intellectual men of our own 
times. Mental power, like physical strength, remains always 
the same through all ages and mutations of human society, 
while knowledge, or the uses made of the intellectual forces, 
is constantly varying from age to age, and changing from one 
country to another. The miserable Italian organ-grinder un- 
der our window, it is somewhat difficult to suppose, embodies 
the high intellect and powerful will, which two thousand 
years ago, made his ancestors masters of the world, but such 
is the fact, however latent, unknown or unfelt by himself may 
be these powers. The amount or extent or degrees of knowl- 
edge, the perceptions of external things, their relations, the 
laws that govern them, their uses, their influences on our well- 
being or the contrary, in short, our capacities for acquiring 
knowledge, for comprehending ourselves and the things about 
us, are limitless, and therefore progress and indefinite perfect- 
ibility are the specific attributes of the Caucasian. Each gen- 
eration applies its capabilities and acquires a certain amount 
of knowledge which the succeeding one is heir to, and which, 
in turn, transmits its acquisition to those following ; thus its 
march is ever onward, and except during the " dark ages" it 
is believed that the great law of progress which God has 
imposed on the race as a duty as well as given it as a blessing, 
has never been interrupted. 

But the inferior races of mankind present a very different 
aspect in this respect. The Negro, isolated by himself, seems 
utterly incapable of transmitting anything whatever to the 



80 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

succeeding generation, and the Aboriginal American, Malay, 
etc., doubtless approximate to him in these respects. The 
Aztecs and Peruvians, at the time of the Spanish conquest, 
however, had advanced to the grade of cultivators, and were 
therefore, doubtless, capable of a limited or imperfect trans- 
mission of their knowledge. The Malay is probably capable 
of still greater development in these respects ; but its limita- 
tions are too decided to be mistaken. The Mongolian, on the 
contrary, approximates much closer to ourselves, and while it 
cannot be said to have a history in any proper sense, it is 
doubtless capable of transmitting its knowledge to future gen- 
erations to a much greater extent than others, but it, too, is at 
an immeasurable distance from the Caucasian in this respect. 
The Chinese, it is true, pretend to trace back their history to 
a period long anterior to our own, but this claim is itself suf- 
ficient proof of its own worthlessness. No one will suppose 
that the individual Chinaman has a larger brain or greater 
breadth of intellect than the individual Caucasian, and if not, 
what folly to suppose that the aggregate Chinese mind was 
capable of doing that which is impossible to the aggregate 
Caucasian intellect! The truth is, what is supposed to be 
Chinese history is a mere collection of fables and nonsensical 
impossibilities, and it may be doubted if they can trace back 
their annals even five hundred years with any certainty or 
with sufficient accuracy to merit a claim to historic dignity. 
There can be no doubt, however, that at some remote period, 
a considerable portion of the Chinese population was Cauca- 
casian, as indeed a portion is still Caucasian, and it is perhaps 
certain that Confucius and other renowned names known to 
the modern Chinese, were white men, and what shadowy and 
uncertain historical data they now possess are therefore likely 
to have originated from these sources. The Mongolian race 
was in fact unknown to ancient writers, though there has 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 81 

doubtless been contact with these races from a very early 
period. 

It is sujyposed by Hamilton Smith and others, that the Mon- 
golian formally existed much further North than at present, 
and that its immense development in regard to numbers 
finally pressed so heavily on the Caucasian populations of Cen- 
tral Asia, that it displaced them, and hence that those mighty 
migrations into Europe, a short time after the beginning of 
the Christian era, were the results of this pressure in their 
rear. Be this as it may, it is certain that those vast inunda- 
tions which at times swept over the Asiatic world, and also 
threatened Europe with their terrible results, were mainly 
composed of Mongolic elements. Attila was of pure Caucasian 
blood, and his chiefs were doubtless also white men or of a 
predominating Caucasian innervation ; but it is equally certain 
that the larger portion of his terrible hordes were Mongolians. 
His seat of empire was on the Danube and somewhere near 
the modern Buda, from which he threatened France as well as 
Rome and the Italian Peninsula, while his dominion extended 
to the frontiers of China, and embraced the vast regions and 
almost countless populations intervening between these widely 
separated points. His invasion of France, and his repulse if 
not defeat at Chalons, is one of those transcendent events that, 
for good or evil, change the order of history, and for centuries 
affect the fortunes of mankind. Had this not happened — had 
his march been uninterrupted — had his terrible legions swept 
over Western as they already had over Eastern Europe, and a 
vast Mongolian population become permanently settled there, 
the destinies of mankind would have been widely different. 
But his repulse — his desperate retreat and his subsequent death, 
which occurred soon after — changed the current of events, and 
his desolating hordes instead of effecting a permanent lodge- 
ment in the heart of Europe, vanished so utterly that, except 

4* 



82 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

a few thousand Laplanders, they have left no trace or evidence 
of their terrible invasion of the European world. 

Genghis Khan, in the twelfth century, was the next great 
conqueror and mighty leader of those vast Mongolic hordes 
which, at various times, have inundated the ancient world, 
and in their desolating march swept away numerous empires 
and extinguished whole populations. Genghis Khan, though 
of predominating Caucasian blood, was mixed with Mongo- 
lian, but his successors for several centuries after were mainly 
Caucasians or the children of Caucasian mothers. Finally, the 
the last and the greatest of these terrible conquerors, Tamerlane, 
in the sixteenth century, made a conquest of nearly the whole 
of Asia, penetrating even into Africa and conquering Egypt, 
while his defeat of Bajazet, the Emperor of the Turks, then at 
the zenith of their power, opened Europe to the march of his 
desolating hordes, and could his life have been extended a few 
years longer, it is quite possible that he would have accom- 
plished what seems to have been the object of Attila, and sub- 
jected the European as well as the Asiatic world to his terri- 
ble sway. As it was, he invaded and conquered India as well 
as Egypt, and the master of, or wearer of twenty-eight crowns, 
he reigned over the whole of Asia to the borders of China, 
except the Turkish dominions, and even here he was the re- 
cognized master though he gave back the empire to the sons 
of Bajazet. The character of his conquests — the death and 
desolation that marked his path — was the most terrible as well 
as the most extensive ever witnessed before or since, and many 
of the largest and most powerful empires of Asia were as 
utterly blotted from the earth as if it had opened and swallowed 
them up. He himself was of pure Caucasian extraction, and 
doubtless his generals and chiefs were the same, and the Cau- 
casian Tartars formed a very considerable portion of his forces. 
There was doubtless also a large mixed or mongrel element, 



nioi y iviuajj BUJUJiAni 



for of the throngs of female captives taken in these Mongolian 
invasions, few ever returned to their homes, but becoming the 
wives of Mongolian chiefs, those numerous and often powerful 
dynasties which have ruled over the Asiatic populations had 
their origin. Nevertheless a vast majority of these almost 
countless hordes led by Tamerlane were unmixed Mongolian, 
and, therefore, though the leader was himself a Caucasian or 
white man, the bloody and desolating character of his con- 
quests were stamped by the cruelty and ferocity of that race. 
Perhaps no better illustration of the Caucasian and Mongolian 
character could be presented than the contrast between Alex- 
ander's invasion of Persia and India and similar invasions of 
Tamerlane. The first, though a "Pagan" several centuries 
before the Christian era, was humane and merciful to the con- 
quered, and except in battle shed no blood, while the latter 
not content with the enforcement of the Moslem rule of tribute 
or death or the religion of the Prophet, slaughtered whole 
populations after the battle was over, and for the gratification 
of his ferocious hordes. His conquest of Bagdad and his pyr- 
amid of ninety thousand heads is one of those terrible things 
that historians are generally puzzled with, for not only is there 
nothing resembling it in history, but there seems to be no 
motive or sufficient cause for it. It was the result, the offspring 
of Mongol ferocity and apathetic cruelty, such as we now wit- 
ness in India and China, and springs as much, perhaps, from a 
low grade of sensibility or incapacity to feel or sympathize 
with suffering, as from a sentiment of cruelty. 

The Hindoos or East Indians, like the Chinese, also pretend 
to trace back their history to a time long anterior to our own 
historic era. Their claim, in this respect, is doubtless better 
founded than that of the former, but it, too, is absurd and 
valueless. The Hindoos were originally Caucasian, who, at 
some remote period, invaded and conquered India, and stamped 



84 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

their civilization and religion on the whole peninsula. It is 
quite likely, indeed it is certain, that India had been invaded 
and conquered by numerous nations or tribes of Caucasians 
long anterior to the Hindoo conquest. There are in our day 
too many traces of this, too many evidences of the former ex- 
istence of the great master race of mankind in India, to per- 
mit us to doubt. The vast debris spread all over India, indeed 
the sixty or seventy dialects of Sanscrit proves that India must 
have been long subject to the dominion of the Caucasian. It 
is believed by many that Jfindoo JToosh, or the high table land 
of Thibet, was the cradle of the race, and it is rational to sup- 
pose that long anterior to our own historic era white men 
may have formed the principal portion of the Indian popula- 
tion. They doubtless thus spread themselves over the penin- 
sula ; or if that was the birth-place of the Mongolian, then it is 
certain that restless and energetic Caucasian tribes at a very 
early day invaded and conquered the country. Even now 
there is a large Caucasian element in India. The Affghans are 
pure Caucasian, while the Sikhs, the Rajpoots, and a large 
portion of the people of Oude are doubtless of predominating 
Caucasian blood. That caste which English writers have so 
much to say about, and the good people of Exeter Hall desire 
so much to " abolish," is, to a great extent, mere mongrel- 
ism, and that which is not mongrelism is simply what England 
itself suffers from to a greater extent than any other country 
or people. The Normans invaded the latter country, took 
possession of their lands, and reduced the conquered Anglo- 
Saxons to slavery, where they have remained, ever since, and 
though the Norman blood has long since disappeared, the 
theory or system remains, for a few cunning and adroit " An- 
glo-Saxons," claiming to be the descendants of Norman Con- 
querors, now monopolize the land and rule the great body of 
the people as absolutely as the real Normans did in their day. 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 85 

The early invaders of India grasped everything, as did the 
Normans in England, but they amalgamated with the con- 
quered, and thus enfeebling themselves, fell a victim to fresh 
invasions of pure Caucasians. They, in their turn, underwent 
the same fate, and thus, from time immemorial there grew up 
those multitudinous dynasties, each of which had its own char- 
acter, and which became a caste, often, doubtless, as a means for 
governing the people, and preserved by the cdnquerors as care- 
fully as that which they in their turn imposed on the country. 
The Normans and Saxons were of the same race, and the 
greater the admixture of blood, the more energetic the popu- 
lation, while the admixture of the conquering Caucasian with 
the conquered Mongolian, has rendered the modern Hindoo 
powerless and contemptible in comparison with the English or 
European invader of our times. The general subject of the 
human races has been so little studied, and our actual knowl- 
edge of these great Asiatic populations is so limited and so 
imperfect, that it is difficult to determine their present charac- 
ter, let alone their former history, and it is quite possible that 
the present native of India is specifically different from the 
Chinese. It has been the custom of writers on this subject to 
assume that the Caucasian and Mongolian, with their often 
extensive affiliations, constitute the sole population of the 
Asiatic continent, and that the differences which are actually 
presented are those produced alone by climate and external 
influences. The writer has adopted this view, but without 
assenting to it in fact, for the actual differences between 
Nena Sahib or an Indian prince, and the true Mongol of 
the Chinese model, are certainly as distinct as those sepa- 
rating the former from a modern Englishman, and therefore he 
thinks it quite probable that further investigation will show a" 
race or species of men, mainly to be found in India, that are 
yet to be known and to take their place in the great human 



86 HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 

family, midway between the Caucasian and Mongolian. Be 
this as it may, however, it is certain that our own race alone 
has a history or is capable of those mental manifestations 
which constitute the materials of history. The Mongoiic ele- 
ment, though often invading and temporarily conquering large 
portions of territory occupied by Caucasian populations, has 
receded almost as rapidly as it advanced, and therefore their 
actual centre of existence remains substantially the same at all 
times. There is, however, a trace of Mongolian blood now 
found outside of its own proper centre, but probably there is a 
much larger Caucasian element among Mongoiic nations. The 
Caucasian Tartars invaded and conquered China a few centu- 
ries ago, and though doubtless mixed up with and mainly Mon- 
gol at this time, they are the ruling dynasty. The instincts 
of this race naturally impelled it to escape from contact or col- 
lision with the superior race ; thus, the great wall of China was 
a vain attempt to keep out a race it fears and hates, and 
which its instincts assure it must rule over itself wherever 
they exist in juxtaposition. Many persons fancy that our trea- 
ties with Japan and China will bring these vast populations 
within the circle of modern civilization, and open up to our- 
selves a fancied Asiatic commerce, which, through California 
and a Pacific railroad, we shall mainly monopolize. Of course 
these notions originate in utter ignorance of what China is in 
reality, and except in degree do not differ from that of the 
Abolitionists in respect to negroes and negro " slavery." The 
Mongol never will, as indeed he never can, become. an element 
in the modern or Christian civilization of our times and of our 
race, and though there may be a certain trade carried on be- 
tween us and China, it is not 1 kely to vary to any considerable 
extent from that existing now, while any attempt to establish 
a diplomatic intercourse or equality is simply absurd, and must 
end in nothing. 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 87 

This, then, is the history of the Mongolian race — the race 
nearest our own — all the history we have of it, and indeed all 
the history there is of it, for however brief or imperfect our 
own knowledge of the race, it is doubtless better and more 
reliable than is its own pretended history of itself. As has 
been said, unlike the Negro, whose capacities cannot go beyond 
the living or actual generation, and with whom millions of 
generations are the same as a single one, the Mongolian mind 
may perhaps, with more or less correctness, grasp the life of a 
few generations, but in no proper sense is it capable of acting, 
and consequently of writing history. 






CHAPTER V. 

COLOR. 

Anatomists and physiologists have labored very earnestly to 
account for or to show the u cause" of color, not of the Negro 
alone, but in the case of our own race. They have generally 
supposed that the pigmentum nigrum, a substance lying im- 
mediately beneath the outward skin, or cuticle, constituted 
that cause, and therefore the complexion was fair or dark, 
blonde or brunette, just as the " coloring" matter might hap- 
pen to be dark or otherwise. This, in a sense, is doubtless 
true, but to speak of it as a cause is an abuse of terms, for it 
is simply a fact, and no more a cause than it is an effect. 
Cause and causes in natural phenomena are known only to 
Omnipotence, and why the Caucasian color is white or the 
Mongol yellow, or the Negro black, is as absolutely hidden 
from us as the cause of their existence at all — as wholly be- 
yond the scope of human intelligence, and therefore of rational 
inquiry, as the cause of the return of the seasons, or why 
men and animals at a certain time arrive at maturity or finally 
decay and die. The divine wisdom and perfect fitness of the 
fact itself, however, are clearly appreciable, and we are able to 
see, not only its transcendent importance, but the utter impos- 
sibility of its being otherwise. There is in all the works of 
God perfect harmony, as well as perfect wisdom, and, there- 
fore, such a monstrosity as a " colored man" — or a being like 
ourselves in all except the color of the negro — is not merely 
absurd, but as impossible in fact, though not so palpable to a 



COLOR. 89 

superficial intelligence, as a white body with a negro head on 
its shoulders, or indeed as a dog with the head of any other 
animal or form of being. 

The face of the Caucasian reflects the character, the emo- 
tions, the instincts, to a certain extent the intellectual forces, 
and even the acquired habits, the virtues or vices of the indi- 
vidual. This, to a certain extent, depends on the mobility of 
the facial muscles, and the general anatomical structure and 
outline of the features ; but without our color, the expression 
would be very imperfect, and the face wholly incapable of ex- 
pressing the inner nature and specific character of the race. 
For example : What is there at the same time so charming 
and so indicative of inner purity and innocence as the blush of 
maiden modesty? For an instant the face is scarlet, then, 
perhaps, paler than ever in its delicate transparency ; and these 
physical changes, beautiful as they may be to the eye, are ren- 
dered a thousand times more so by our consciousness that they 
reflect moral emotions infinitely more beautiful. Can any one 
suppose such a thing possible to a black face ? that these sud- 
den and startling alternations of color, which reflect the moral 
perceptions and elevated nature of the white woman, are pos- 
sible to the negress ? And if the latter cannot reflect these 
things in her face — if her features are utterly incapable of 
expressing emotions so elevated and beautiful, is it not certain 
that she is without them — that they have no existence in her 
inner being, are no portion of her moral nature ? To suppose 
otherwise is not only absurd, but impious ; it is to suppose 
that the Almighty Creator would endow a being with moral 
wants and capacities that could have no development — with 
an inner nature denied any external reflection or manifestation 
of its wants or of itself. Of course, it is not intended to say 
that the negress has not a moral nature ; it is only intended to 
demonstrate the fact that she has not the moral nature of the 



90 



COLOR 



white woman; and, therefore, those who would endow her 
inner nature with these qualities, must necessarily charge the 
Creator with the gross injustice of withholding from her any 
expression of qualities so essential to her own happiness, as 
well as to our conception of the dignity and beauty of woman- 
hood. This same illustration is extensively diversified in re- 
gard to the other sex. It is seen every day in our social life, 
and confronts us at every step. The white man is flushed with 
anger, or livid with fear, or pale with grief. He is at one 
moment so charged with the darker passions as to be almost 
black, and the next so softened by sorrow or stricken by grief 
that the face is bloodless and absolutely white. All these out- 
ward manifestations of the inner nature — of the moral being 
with which God has endowed us— are familiar to every one. 
They form a portion of our daily experience, and constitute an 
essential part of our social life. 

There are great differences among our people in regard to 
the general expression of the features. Some reflect in their 
faces all the emotions by which they are moved, while others 
are so stolid, or they have acquired such a control over them- 
selves in these respects, as to appear impenetrable. But this 
has no connection with color, or any relation to that great 
fundamental and specific fact by which and through which the 
Almighty has adapted the character and revealed the relative 
conditions of the several human races. Like all the other great 
facts involved, color is the standard and exact admeasurement 
of the specific character. The Caucasian is white, the Negro 
is black ; the first is the most superior, ', he latter the most in- 
ferior — an d between these extremes of humanity are the inter- 
mediate races, approximating to the former or approaching the 
latter, just as the Almighty, in His boundless wisdom and 
ineffable beneficence, has seen fit to order it. Color is no more 
radical or universal, or no more a difference between white 
men and negroes, than any other fact out of the countless mil- 



COLOR. 91 

lions of facts that separate them. It is more palpable to the 
sense, more unavoidable, but no more universal or invariable 
than the difference in the hair, the voice, the features, the form 
of the limbs, the single globule of blood, or the myriads 
and millions of things that constitute the Negro being. It 
would seem that the Almighty Creator, when stamping this 
palpable distinction on the very surface, had designed to guard 
His work from any possible desecration, and therefore had 
marked it so legibly, that human ignorance, fraud, folly, or 
wickedness, could by no possibility mistake it. And indeed 
it is not mistaken, for those perverse creatures among us who 
clamor so loudly for negro equality, or that the negro shall be 
treated as if he were a white man, only desire to force their 
hideous theories on others, and would rather have their own 
families utterly perish from the earth than to practice or live 
up to their doctrine in this respect. The term "colored man," 
or " colored person," though natural enough to Europeans, or 
to those who had never seen negroes, or different races from 
themselves, could never have originated in a community hav- 
ing negroes in its midst, for it is not only a misnomer but an 
absurdity as gross as to say a colored fish or a colored bird. 
Finally, as color is the standard and the test of the specific 
character, revealing the inner nature and actual capabilities of 
the race, so, too, is it the test and standard of the normal 
physical condition of the individual. The highest health of 
the white man is distinguished by a pure and transparent skin, 
and exactly as he departs from this, his color is clouded and 
sallow ; while that of the negro is marked by perfect black- 
ness, and the departure from this is to dirty brown, almost ash- 
color — thus, as in everything else, revealing true eternal truth 
that life and well-being, social as well as individual, are iden- 
tical with an exact recognition of these extremes, and that it is 
only when disease and unnatural conditions prevail, that a cer- 
tain approximation to color or to equality become possible. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FIGURE. 

To consider and properly contrast the attitude or the gen- 
eral outline of the negro form with that of the Caucasian, 
needs a large space to do the subject justice. But a few brief 
points are sufficient to grasp its essential features and enable 
every one to add or to fill up the details from his own experi- 
ence. Cuvier, the great French zoologist, it is said might pick 
up a bone of any kind, however minute, in the deserts of 
Arabia, and from this alone determine the species, genus, and 
class to which it belonged. This at first seems almost incred- 
ible, but a moment's reflection shows not only its practicability, 
but the ease and certainty with which it may be accomplished. 
Indeed we have recently witnessed a still more remarkable 
instance of this tracing the life and defining the relations of 
organized beings from a minute and remote point. Agassiz 
has been able, from a single scale of a fish, to determine the 
specific character of fishes, and those, too, which he had never 
before seen ! A bone is picked up at random by the zoologist ; 
he roon discovers that it is a bone of the thigh of some animal, 
and this necessarily leads to the fact that it belonged to a 
quadruped, and it, in its turn, leads to other facts equally 
connected and dependent on each other, for that great funda- 
mental and eternal law of harmony or adaptation which God 
has stamped on the organic and material universe permits of 
no incongruities or contradictions to mar its beauty or deface 
its grandeur. Thus an anatomist, who had given a certain 



FIGURE. 93 

amount of attention to the subject, might select the smallest 
bone, a carpal or bone of the finger, for example, and de- 
termine from among millions of similar ones, whether it was 
that of a white man or of a negro, with perfect certainty and 
the greatest ease. He would know that such bone formed 
part of a hand with a limited flexibility — that the bony struc- 
ture was in accord with the tendons and muscles that moved 
it, and gave it, compared with that of the Caucasian, a re- 
stricted capacity of action, of susceptibility, etc., and he would 
necessarily connect this hand with an arm of corresponding 
structure, and going on multiplying the connections and rela- 
tions, he would be led to the final result, and without possibil- 
ity of mistake, that the bone in question belonged to a negro. 
But while the analysis of a single bone or of a single feature 
of the negro being is thus sufficient to demonstrate the spe- 
cific character or to show the diversity of race, that great fact 
is still more obviously and with equal certainty revealed in the 
form, attitude, and other external qualities. The negro is inca- 
pable of an erect or direct perpendicular posture. The general 
structu|jfc of his limbs, the form of the pelvis, the spine, the 
way the head is set on the shoulders, in short, the tout ensem~ 
hie of the anatomical formation, forbids an erect position. 
But while the whole structure is thus adapted to a slightly 
stooping posture, the head would seem to be the most impor- 
tant agency, for with any other head or the head of any 
other race, it would be impossible to retain an upright position 
at all. 

The form or figure of the Caucasian is perfectly erect, with 
fhe eyes on a plane with the horizon, and the broad forehead, 
distinct features and full and flowing beard, stamp him with a 
superiority and even majesty denied to all other creatures, and 
relatively to all other races of men. On the contrary, the 
narrow and longitudinal head of the negro projecting posteri- 



94 FIGURE. 

ally, places his eyes at an angle with the horizon, and thus alone 
enables him to approximate to an erect position. Of course, 
Ave are not to speculate on what is impossible or to suggest 
what might happen if the negro head had resembled that of the 
Caucasian, for the slightest change of an elementary atom in 
the negro structure would render him an impossible monstros- 
ity. But with the broad forehead and small cerebellum of the 
white man, it is perfectly obvious that the negro would no 
longer possess a centre of gravity, and therefore those philan- 
thropic people who would " educate" him into intellectual 
equality or change the mental organism of the negro, would 
simply render him incapable of standing on his feet or of an 
upright position on any terms. Every one must have remarked 
this peculiarity in the form and attitude of the negro. His head 
is thrown upwards and backwards, showing a certain though 
remote approximation to the quadruped both in its actual 
formation and the manner in which it is set on his shoulders. 
The narrow forehead and small cerebrum — the centre of the 
intellectual powers — and the projection of the posterior portion 
— the centre of the animal functions — render the neSfro head 
radically and widely different from that of the white man. This 
every one knows, because every one sees it every day, and the 
universal and all pervading law of adaptation which God has 
eternally stamped upon the structure of all His creatures en- 
ables the negro to thus preserve a centre of gravity and com- 
paratively an upright posture. But were it true that men can 
make themselves, can push aside the Almighty Creator Him- 
self, as taught by certain " reformers" of the day, and vastly 
improve the " breed" and, as the " friends of humanity" hold, 
that the negro can be made to conform in his intellectual 
qualities to those of the white man, then it is certain that their 
difficulties would become greater than ever. That the cere- 
brum or anterior portion of the brain is the centre, the seat, 



FIGURE . 95 

the organism, in fact, of the intellectual nature, is as certain as 
that the eye is the organ of sight, and that in proportion to its 
size relatively with the cerebellum — the centre of the animal 
instincts — is there mental capacity, however latent it may be 
in the case of individuals, is equally certain. And should these 
would-be reformers of the work of the Almighty change the 
intellectual nature of the negro, they would necessarily change 
the organism through which, and by which, that nature is 
manifested, and thus enlarging the anterior and diminishing 
the posterior portion of the brain into correspondence with 
their own, it is perfectly evident that they would destroy the 
harmony which exists between the negro head and the negro 
body, and instead of a black-white man, or a being with the 
same intellectual nature as ours, they would render him as ut- 
terly incapable of locomotion or of an upright position at all 
as if they had cut off his head, instead of re-creating it on the 
model of their own ! The whole anatomical structure, the feet, 
the hands, the limbs, the size and form of the head, the fea- 
tures, the hair, the color, the tout ensemble of the negro beimx, 
as it is revealed to the sense, embodies the negro inferiority 
when compared with other races ; and as regards the white 
man or Caucasian, it presents a contrast so striking and an in- 
terval so broad and unmistakable that it seems impossible any- 
one's senses could be so blunted, or his perceptions so per- 
verted as to be rendered incapable of perceiving it. The flexi- 
ble grace of the limbs, the straight lines of the figure, the 
expressive features, the broad forehead and transparent color, 
and flowing beard, all combine to give a grace and majestv to 
the Caucasian that stamps him undisputed master of all living 
beings, and even the creatures of the animal world perceive 
and acknowledge this supremacy. It is not an uncommon 
thing in India for a tiger, rendered desperate by hunger, to 
suddenly leap into a crowd and to carry off a man, but instead 



96 FIGURE. 

of a European he invariably selects a native, and while such a 
thing as the seizure of a white man is unknown, the negroes 
in Sierra Leone are frequently carried off and eaten by lions. 
The instinct of the animal leads it to attack the inferior, and 
therefore feebler being, as even our domestic animals are far 
more likely to attack children than adults. The negro actu- 
ally has nothing in common with the animal world that other 
races have not, but those things common to men and animals 
are much more prominent in him. Thus, while there is an 
impassable and perpetual chasm between them, there is a cer- 
tain resemblance between the negto and the ourang-outang. 
The latter is the most advanced species of the simiadse or ape 
family, while the negro is the lowest in the scale of the human 
creation, and the approximation to each other, though of 
course eternally incomplete, is certainly striking. As stated 
elsewhere, the author does not belong to that gloomy and for- 
bidding school of materialism which would make the faculties 
and even our moral emotions the mere result of organism. 
But there is an inseparable connection which necessarily ren- 
ders them the exact admeasurement of each other, and though 
neither cause nor result, and their ultimate relation eternally 
hidden from the finite mind, they are, in this existence at least, 
inextricably bound up together. The approximation, there- 
fore, of the negro to the ourang-outang, while there is a bound- 
less space within the circle of which there can be no resem- 
blence — for the negro is absolutely and entirely human — and 
within which it is not proposed to enter, is exactly revealed in 
the outward form and attitude. The negro, from the struc- 
ture of his limbs, his head, etc., has a decided inclination to 
the quadruped posture, while the ourang-outang has an equal 
tendency to the upright human form. The latter often walks 
partially erect, and sometimes even carries a club, while the 
typical negro in Africa or Cuba, or anywhere in his natural 



FIGURE. 97 

state, is quite as likely to squat on his haras as to stand on his 
feet. Thus, an anatomist with the negro and ourang-outang 
before him, after a careful comparison, would say, perhaps, 
that nature herself had been puzzled where to place them, 
and had finally compromised the matter by giving them 
an exactly equal inclination to the form and attitude of each 
other. 

5 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE HAIR. 

Next to color, there is nothing so palpable to the sense as 
the hair, or nothing that reveals the specific difference of race 
so unmistakably as the natural covering of the head. The hair 
of the Caucasian is a graceful and imposing feature or quality, 
of course in perfect harmony with everything else, but some- 
times, and especially in the case of females, it is an attribute 
of physical beauty more striking and attractive than any other. 
Its color, golden or sunny brown, and the dazzling hues of 
black, purple, and auburn tresses, has been the theme of poets 
from time immemorial, while its luxuriance, and silky softness, 
and graceful length will continue to be the pride of one sex 
and the admiration of the other as long as the perception of 
beauty remains. 

In the Mongol, Malay, or Indian, as well as the Negro, it 
remains the same through all the stages of life, and it is only 
in extreme old age that it becomes gray or silvery white, or 
even falls off from any portion of the head. The coarse, stiff, 
black hair of the Indian child is that also of its parents — and a 
gray-headed or bald-headed Indian, except in some cases of 
extreme old age, is as rare perhaps as that of a bald-headed 
negro. But the child of the Caucasian, with perfectly white 
or flaxen hair, expands into the maiden with clustering ringlets 
of auburn or perhaps raven black, to be threaded with silver, 
in middle life perhaps, and though less common than with the 
other sex, a few years later it becomes again, as in early child- 



THE HAIK. 99 

hood, perfectly white. But there are no exceptions to the 
uniform color of the hair in other races. Such a thing as a 
flaxen-haired or a light-haired negro child never existed. 
There may be sometimes a slight approximation in this respect 
among Mongols, but the hair of the negro, except in some 
cases of extreme old age, remains absolutely the same at all 
periods, from the cradle to the grave. The elementary struc- 
ture^ shown by the elaborate microscopical observations of 
Mr. Peter A. Browne, of Philadelphia, differs as widely as the 
external or superficial modifications. The popular notion that 
it is wool instead of hair that covers the negro head is like 
many others, founded on a mere external resemblance, without 
any actual correspondence. It is hair, but sui generis, or 
rather specific and common to the negro alone, and however 
widely different from that of white people, it is no more so 
than any other quality or feature of the negro nature. The 
variations of this feature in the white race are almost unlimited. 
Hair dressing even has been elevated to the respectability of 
an art, if not to the dignity of a science. For many gener- 
ations the kings of France kept artistes of this character, who 
often received a salary equal to the ministers of the crown, and 
one of them, Oliver Le Dain, became in fact, if not in form, 
the actual ruler of the kingdom. But it was the princesses 
and ladies of the court that exalted this " art" to its highest 
pitch of extravagance and display. Marie Antoinette — one of 
the most unhappy women that ever lived — made it an impor- 
tant part of every day's employment, and exacted the same 
labor from her attendants. Even in our own more sensible 
times, the Empress Eugenie changes the fashions in this re- 
spect almost every month, and the styles or modes of dressing 
their hair is an extravagant though amiable weakness of our 
own fair countrywomen. There is in fact no mere physical 
quality of the female so attractive, or that is capable of being 



100 THE HAIB. 

rendered so charming, as the hair, and the elaborate dressings, 
the time and labor spent on its decoration, proceed as much 
perhaps from that delicate perception of the beautiful innate in 
woman as it does from female vanity or the love of display. 
But with this " wealth of beauty" of the Caucasian woman, 
what an immeasurable interval separates her from the negress ! 
Is it possible for any who sees the latter, with her short, stiff, 
uncombable fleece of seeming wool, to endow her with the attri- 
bute of beauty or comeliness ? And though somewhat less 
palpable in the other sex, the hair is an essential element of 
manly beauty as well as dignity, and the " love locks" of the 
cavaliers and even the " soap locks" of more modern times, are 
identified with certain conceptions of manly grace. Can any 
one form such conceptions in respect to the hair of the negro ? 
Can he identify any of these things with the crisp, stiff, seem- 
in^ wool that covers the head of that race ? Can the senti- 
ment of beauty, grace or dignity, or indeed any idea whatever 
— except as a necessary provision of nature for covering the 
negro head — attach to the hair of the negro ? This is all that 
is possible to the mind of a white person in actual juxtaposi- 
tion with the negro, and therefore while the European Abol- 
itionist may fancy his head adorned by " ambrosial curls," our 
own native Abolitionists are wholly unable to conceive of any 
use or purpose whatever for that dense mat of wiry and twisted 
hair which covers the negro head, except as a provision of na- 
ture for its protection. The protection of the head, or rather 
of the brain, is the purpose or the function of the hair in all 
races, but while that, in our race, is identified with elevated a. id 
striking qualities, it is the sole purpose in the case of the negro. 
The short, crisp, dense mass that covers the negro head, like 
every other quality or attribute of the negro nature, is in per- 
fect harmony with the climatic and external circumstances with 
which God has surrounded him. The popular notion that the 



THE HAIE. 101 

negro skull is much thicker than that of the white man origi- 
nated from this peculiarity of the covering of the negro head. 
The hair is so dense, so curled and twisted together, and forms 
such a complete mat or net work as to be wholly impenetrable 
to the rays of a vertical jsun, and to furnish a vastly better 
protection for the brain than the thickest felt hat does to that 
of the white man. Thus, though negroes on our southern 
plantations, with the imitative instincts of their race, copy 
after the whites and wear hats, it is merely a " fashionable 
folly," and dictated by no natural want, nor in the slightest 
degree adds to their happiness. And beside the protection 
from the fierce heats of the tropics, the hair of the negro pro- 
tects his head in other respects. It is so hard and wiry, and 
in fact triangular in form, that a blow from the hand of a mas- 
ter would doubtless injure the latter vastly more than it would 
the head of the negro, and the common practice among them 
of butting each other with their heads, though knocking them 
off their feet, and the concussion heard at considerable dis- 
tances, never results in injury, for the dense mat of semi-wool 
that covers the head protects it from mischief. The negro 
hair is then designed solely for the protection of the negro 
head, and not only differs widely from that of the Caucasian, 
but from that of all other races, for the negro is a tropical race, 
mid the hair, like all other attributes of the negro being, phys- 
ical and moral, is adapted to a tropical clime, and in perfect 
accord with the physical wants and moral necessities of the race. 
But the mere covering of the head, or the mere protection 
of the brain, is not all that distinguishes the different races 
in these resj^ects. The beard is equally radical and univer- 
sal, though not so palpable a specialty as color, and in some 
respects it may be said to be a more important one. The 
Caucasian alone has a beard, for though all others approximate 
to it in this respect, it is the only bearded race, and some 



102 THE HAIE. 

writers on ethnology have been so impressed with this impos- 
ing and striking distinction that they have sought to make it 
the basis of a classification of races. And there certainly is no 
physical or outward quality that so imposingly impresses itseli 
on the senses as a mark of superiority, or evidence of supre 
macy,as a full and flowing beard. Color, when in repose, or 
when it does not give expression to the inner nature, does not, 
in reality, constitute a distinction at all, but the beard is an 
evidence of superiority, that, however varied the action or 
whatever the circumstances, is equally distinct and universal 
as an attribute of supremacy. This is sufficiently illustrated 
in our own race and our every day experience. The youth is 
beardless, and pari passu as he approaches to the maturity of 
manhood there is a corresponding development of beard. The 
intellect — the mental strength — the moral beauty, all the qual- 
ities of the inner being, as well as those outward attributes 
tangible to the sense, harmonize perfectly with the growth of 
the beard, and when that has reached its full development, it 
is both the signal and the proof of mature manhood — an exact 
admeasurement and absolute proof of the maturity of the indi- 
vidual as well as the type and standard of the race. This is 
equally true when applied to different races. The Caucasian 
is the only bearded race, but all others approximate in this 
respect, and the negro is furthest removed of all, for the trop- 
ical woolly haired African or negro, excej>t a little tuft on the 
chin and sometimes on the upper lip, has nothing that can be 
confounded with a beard. People sometimes see negroes with 
considerable hair on their faces, and hence conclude that they 
are as likely to have beards as white men ; but they forget 
that all in our society who are not whites are considered negroes, 
and therefore those bearded negroes have a large infusion, and 
doubtless sometimes a vastly predominating infusion of Cauca- 
sian blood. The beard symbolizes our highest conceptions of 



THE HAIR. 103 

manhood — it is the outward evidence of mature development 
— of complete growth, mental as well as physical — of strength, 
wisdom and manly grace, and the full, flowing, and majestic 
beard of the Caucasian, in contrast with the negro or other 
subordinate races, is as striking and imposing as the mane of 
the lion when compared with the meaner beasts of the animal 
world. Like color or any other of the great fundamental facts 
separating races, the beard is sufficient to determine their spe- 
cific character and their specific relations to each other, and we 
have only to apply our every day experience as regards this 
outward symbol of inner manhood to measure the relative infe- 
riority of the negro. The Abolitionists demand that the 
u equal manhood" of the negro shall be recognized, and com- 
plain bitterly of a government that refuses to respond to their 
wishes in this respect, but if this " equal manhood" was actu- 
ally revealed to them in the person of the negro as it is in the 
persons of white men, and as God has alone provided and or- 
dained or permitted it to be revealed, they would be over- 
whelmed with astonishment or convulsed with laughter. A 
negro with a full and flowing beard, with this symbol of per- 
fect manhood or with this outward manifestation of the inner 
(Caucasian) being, would be a ludicrous monstrosity, as impos- 
sible, of course, as the Caliban of Shakespeare ; but if such a 
supernatural being should suddenly make his appearance in 
an Abolition conventicle, the " friends of humanity" would be 
as much astonished as if an inhabitant of another world had 
come among them. A youth, with the majestic and flowing 
beard of adult life, if the monstrosity did not shock and disgust 
us, would be irresistibly comical, and equally so in the case of 
the childish and romping negro. Thus, were the leaders of 
the " anti-slavery enterprise" busily engaged in discussing the 
" equal manhood" of the negro, and in earnestly denouncing 
those who, unable to see it, decline to admit such a thing, and 



104 



THE H AIE 



a negro should enter the room with the actual proof of its ex- 
istence — with the full, flowing beard of the Caucasian, and 
therefore the outward symbol of an " equal manhood," as the 
hand of the Eternal has revealed it in the person of the former — 
the whole Abolition congregation, if not paralyzed with hor- 
ror, would burst into uncontrolable laughter. The wrongs of 
the " slave," the cruelties of the master, the " hopes of human- 
ity," the most doleful stories and the saddest tales of the 
suffering " bondmen," would be interrupted by screams of 
laughter at such a ludicrous spectacle as a negro with the 
majestic and flowing beard of the white man. This outward 
symbol of complete manhood, or this external indication which 
typifies the high nature and lofty qualities of the Caucasian, 
is no more impossible, however, to the negro than that "equal 
manhood" which is demanded for him, and therefore were the 
" friends of humanity" to vary their programme and demand 
an " equal" beard, or that we shall grant the negro the full 
and flowing beard of the Caucasian, they would render their 
performances more interesting without giving up any of their 
" principles," as the absurdity is exactly the same in either 
case. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FEATURES. 

The features reflect the inner nature, the faculties or specific 
qualities, and they are distinct or indistinct, developed or un- 
developed, as we ascend or descend in the scale of being. In 
the simpler forms of animal existence, there is close resem- 
blence to vegetable life in this respect ; but ascending to the 
vertebrata, and especially the mammalia, there is a broad 
distinction between the head and body, and instead of an unde- 
fined uniformity pervading the whole exterior surface, the face 
becomes a centre in which the essential character of the crea- 
ture is written by the hand of Nature. It is true, that the 
general form of the body is significant of the grosser qualities. 
The muscular and motive forces of the horse are evidently de- 
signed for swiftness ; those of the lion, and the felinaa gener- 
ally, are designed both for strength and swiftness ; while that 
of the ox and other mammalia is adapted to a negative kind 
of strength which results from a combination of all the physical 
forces, and not, as in the former case, from an excessive muscular 
development. But the higher qualities, even in animals, are leg- 
ibly written in the face or features. In the human creation, of 
course, this external reflection of the inner nature in the features 
becomes vastly more distinct and real, and in our own race not 
unfrequently does the face become a very window of the soul, 
where may be read the sweetest and most exquisite emotions 
of a sensitive and delicate nature, or, as sometimes happens, 
the gross and sensual thoughts of a depraved and perverted 



106 THE FEATURES. 

one. There are, indeed, countless and innumerable variations 
in our own race in this respect, The white or Caucasian men 
of Asia, of Africa, Europe, and America, are so modified by 
climate, habits, government, religion, etc., that those ethnolo- 
gists who are not anatomists have sometimes confounded 
them, and classed them as distinct species. Even on the 
same continent, in the same country, sometimes the same fam- 
ily, these variations are so marked that they always seem to 
belong to different species. The globular head, broad fore- 
head, oval cheeks, straight nose, and distinct, well defined lips 
and mouth, however, whatever may be the expression, always 
remain the same, and can never be confounded with any other 
race of men. And these modifications in the Caucasian are 
not confined to the face, but pervade the whole surface. White, 
black, and red hair, white skin and brown ones, blondes and 
brunettes, are often found in the same family. It is even 
bo in regard to size — some are short and others tall — some 
pigmies while others are giants — and not unfrequently in the 
same household, while the same nation exhibits every possible 
variety in this respect. The Caucasian race alone presents 
these variations — the other races great uniformity ; and the 
negro, lowest in the scale, presents an almost absolute resem- 
blance to each other. Of all the millions that have existed 
on the earth, their hair not only in color but in form has been 
absolutely the same, and such a being as a different-colored or 
straight-haired, or long-haired negro never existed. On visit- 
ing a plantation at the South, one sees a thousand negroes so 
nearly alike, that except where wide differences of age exist, 
they are all alike, and even in size rarely depart from that 
standard uniformity that nature has stamped upon the race. 
The entire external surface, as well as his interior organism, dif- 
fers radically from the Caucasian. His muscles, the form of 
the limbs, his feet, hands, pelvis, skeleton, all the organs of 



THE FEATURES. 107 

locomotion, give him an outward attitude that, while radically 
different from the Caucasian, approaches an almost absolute 
uniformity of character in the negro. His longitudinal head, 
narrow and receding forehead, flat nose, enormous lips and 
protuberant jaws, in short, his flat, shapeless and indistinct fea- 
tures strikingly approximate to the animal creation, and they 
are as utterly incapable of reflecting certain emotions as so 
much flesh and blood of any other portion of his body. The 
Almighty and All- Wise Creator has made all things perfect, 
and adapted the negro features, as well as those of the white 
man, to the inner nature, but if it were true that the negro had 
certain qualities with which ignorance and delusion would 
endow him, then it would be quite evident that the Almighty 
Creator had made a fatal blunder in this case, for it is clearly 
a matter of physical demonstration that the negro features can- 
not reflect these qualities. The features of the animal are 
made to express its wants, to reflect the nature God has given 
it. We witness this every day among our domestic animals — 
the cat, the dog, the horse, all exhibit their qualities, their 
wants, their moods, at different times their anger, suffering, 
and affection, all that their natures are callable of, are reflected 
in their faces, and we understand them. In our own race, the 
transparent skin, the deeply cut and distinct features become 
often a perfect mirror of the inner nature, and reflect the nicest 
shades of feeling as well as the deepest emotions of the soul. 
Envy, anger, pride, shame, scowling hate and malignant fear, 
as well as gentle affection and the most exalted love, are writ- 
ten as legibly in the face as if they were things of physical 
form, and their innumerable modifications and variations are wit- 
nessed all about us, and every day of our lives. How grandly 
this is displayed in the case of the orator ! This must have been 
apparent to those who heard Mr. Clay in the Senate, and saw 
those wonderful changes of feature — one moment convulsed 



108 THE FEATURES. 

with anger, then lit up with genius, or with pride and pomp 
of conscious power, and in another reflecting, perhaps, all a 
woman's sweetness or a child's gentleness. Color, of course, 
is essential to this, for a display of the passions and emotions 
on the dark ground-work of the negro skin would be as impos- 
sible as a rainbow at midnight, but without the deeply cut 
and distinctly marked features of the Caucasian, color would 
be comparatively useless in reflecting the grander emotions of 
the soul. Any one referring to his own experience for a 
moment will see how impossible, as a mere physical matter, 
that the negro face can reflect the qualities attributed to him 
by those who are ignorant of his real nature. The narrow 
and receding forehead, the shallow eyes, flat nose, almost on 
a level with the cheeks, the protruding and enormous lips, — the 
only thing that really can be said to be distinct in the negro 
face, — the tout ensemble without form or meaning when con- 
trasted with the white man, is, in connection with the color, 
the dark ground of the negro skin, clearly incapable of re- 
flecting certain qualities of our own race. The negro has, of 
course, moral emotions, as have all human creatures, and his 
face,like that of the Caucasian, is capable of reflecting all his 
wants, his likes and dislikes, his hopes and fears, but every one 
who has seen him must know that the higher qualities of the 
Caucasian cannot find expression in the negro features, and 
therefore he does not possess those qualities, or, as has been 
said, the All- Wise and Almighty Creator of all has committed 
a fetal mistake, and unjustly endowed him with qualities 
which he is forever forbidden to express ! 



CHAPTER IX. 

LANGUAGE. 

A few years since, an eminent historian, in a public lecture, 
discussed the probabilities of a universal language as an instru- 
ment of universal history, and as means for the universal civil- 
ization of mankind ! Another public lecturer discussing this 
subject, and on a professedly scientific basis, held that language 
had a miraculous origin, though the period when this super- 
natural gift was conferred on man was left wholly to the imagin- 
ation of his audience. Others, and among them Buffon, Prit- 
chard, and even several ethnologists, have scarcely risen above 
this nonsense, while their uses or application of this faculty 
have been vastly more injurious to science than even, their 
original misconceptions on the general subject. 

Language is naturally divided into two distinct and widely 
separated portions, having no necessary connection, though 
at certain points or stages uniting and combining together. 
First, is that universal capacity of expressing itself— its wants, 
its sufferings, and its enjoyments — which God has given to all 
His creatures, from the insect at our feet to the Caucasian 
man standing at the head of this vast and innumerable host 
of living beings. In the second place, in its structure and ar- 
rangement into parts or portions of speech ; in short, its gram- 
matical construction. With the former it is alone or mainly 
proposed to deal in this place, though it will be necessary 
occasionally to refer to the latter. As has been said, all living 
or rather all animal beings have the faculty of expressing their 



110 LANGUAGE. 

wants, and they have a vocal organism in exact correspon- 
dence with these wants and the purposes for which they are 
designed by the common Creator of all. Except to a few 
laborious and enthusiastic students of natural history, the vast 
world of insect life is a terra incog?iita, but each one of these 
myriad of beings is adapted to some specific purpose and benefi- 
cently designed by the Almighty Master of Life for the same 
universal enjoyment which is so distinctly revealed as the end 
of their existence in the more elaborately organized and higher 
endowed classes of animal being. And millions of these mi- 
nute and often unseen creatures are daily and hourly singing 
praises to the Almighty Creator for His infinite goodness, 
rendering the fields and forests vocal with the music of their 
gratitude and the exuberance of their enjoyment. As we as- 
cend in the scale of animated existence, the vocal faculty or 
language becomes still more distinctly revealed, with a vocal 
apparatus or organism in exact correspondence with the func- 
tion or faculty that God has given to the being in question. 
The pigeon, of course, cannot give us the notes of the canary 
bird, nor the owl sing the songs of the nightingale. The ser- 
pent cannot exchange his hiss for the growl of the tiger, nor 
the ass abandon its uncouth utterances for the mighty roar or 
the majestic voice of the lion. Each is permitted to express 
its wants, its sufferings, and its joys, and each is provided with 
a vocal organism specific and peculiar to itself and to its kind, 
and in accord with the universal law of adaptation which in- 
separably unites organism with function. This, then, in its 
elementary form, is language — a faculty common to the ani- 
mal world, and a necessity of animal existence. It differs in 
no essential respect in regard to human beings, or it varies no 
more from that of the animal world than other functions or 
faculties of the human being. There is, it is true, a point of 
departure or divergence where the analogies of the animal 



LANGUAGE. Ill 

world are no longer applicable to human beings, or where ani- 
mal beings cannot furnish parallels for those endowed with a 
moral nature and destined for immortality ; but a vocal organ- 
ism with its corresponding faculty or function is essentially the 
same thing in both, and differs only in form and degree among 
the innumerable beings that compose or are comprised within 
the vast world of animated existence. While language, there- 
fore, the voice or faculty by which animals as well as human 
beings express their wants, is universal and only varied as the 
structure and nature are varied, and while the vocal organism 
is in exact harmony with the faculty or function in all cases 
and in every phase of animated existence, there is also, and oi 
necessity, a specific modification of this facility in the case of 
the several human races or species. The vocal organs of the 
negro differ widely from those of the white man, and of course 
there is a corresponding difference in the language. The spe- 
cific or the most essential feature of the negro nature is his 
imitative instincts, or his capacity for imitating the qualities 
and for acquiring the habitudes of the white man. This, of 
course, is limited to his actual juxtaposition with the superior 
race, for aside from that organic necessity which utterly for- 
bids its being otherwise, there is no historical fact better 
attested than that which shows him invariably relapsing into 
savageism whenever he is left without the restraining support 
of the former. But for wise and beneficent purposes, God has 
endowed him with a capacity of imitation, and he is enabled 
to apply it to such an extent that those ignorant of the negro 
nature actually offer it as a proof of his equal capacity ! But 
with all his power to thus imitate the habits and to copy the 
language of the white man, it is not possible that a single 
example can be furnished of his success in regard to the latter. 
With us, and especially at the North, all are negroes who are 
tainted with negro blood, and thus many persons will imagine 



112 LANGUAGE. 

that they have seen negroes who were a 5 competent to speak 
our language as white men themselves. But no actual or 
typical negro will be able — no matter what pains have been 
taken to " educate" him — to speak the language of the white 
man with absolute correctness. European ethnologists have, 
notwithstanding, sought to make language the means for trac- 
ing the history and determining the character of races, the 
worthlessness and indeed the absurdity of which only needs a 
single illustration to expose it. The negroes of Hayti have 
imitated or copied the language of their former masters, the 
French, therefore they are of the same race, and the future 
ethnologists would pronounce them Frenchmen ! As the negro 
cannot preserve anything that he copies from the Caucasian 
beyond a certain period, the negroes of that island are rapidly 
losing all that they obtained from their former masters, and 
though the educated portion on the coasts, and especially the 
mongrels, yet retain the French language, those in the interior 
are rapidly relapsing into their native African tongue. And a 
century or two hence, when the French is entirely extinct and 
the existing negro population speak an African dialect, or 
what is far more probable, speak our own, the ethnological 
enquirer would decide that those led by Touissant and Chris- 
tophe in the war of "Independence" were Frenchmen instead 
of Negroes, because, forsooth, the public documents of the 
time showed they spoke the French language ! Thus, while 
language is an important means for tracing nationalities or 
varieties of our own race, as, for example, the modern Spanish, 
French, Italian, etc., in connection with the great Latin family 
of southern Europe, it is simply absurd to apply it to distinct 
species like Caucasians and negroes. Each race or each spe- 
cies, as each and every other form of life, is in perfect har- 
mony with itself, and therefore the voice of the negro, both in 
its tones and its structure, varies just as widely from that of 



LANGUAGE. 113 

the white man as any other feature or faculty of the negro be- 
ing. Any one accustomed to negroes would distinguish the 
negro voice at night among any number of those of white 
men by its tones alone, and without regard to his peculiar 
utterances. Tones or mere sounds are of course indescribable, 
and therefore no comparison in this respect is possible, but all 
those familiar with the tones of the negro voice know that it 
is never musical or capable of those soft and sweet inflections 
or modulations common to our own race. Music is to the 
negro an impossible art, and therefore such a thing as a negro 
singer is unknown. It is true that, a few years since, certain 
amiable people, both at the North and in England, believed 
for a time that they had secured a prodigy of this kind in the 
person of the " Black Swan," but after a careful and patient 
trial, it was found to be a mistake. She was not even a ne- 
gress, though perhaps of predominating negro blood, and was 
aided and encouraged by every possible means, especially in 
England, where she was actually placed under the care of 
Queen Victoria's music master, but without avail — Nature was 
superior to art — the laws of God more potent than those of 
human invention — and the " Black Swan" finally disappeared 
from public view. The negro is fond of music, as are all other 
beings, and indeed all animal beings of the more elevated 
classes, but music is to him merely a thing of the senses. With 
the white race music is perceived as well as felt — an intel- 
lectual as well as sensuous thing — and though it by no 
means follows that intellectual persons, with minds above 
the common average, should also have musical powers, that 
sensitive and exquisite organization which is necessary to a 
musical genius must be united with a brain of corresponding 
complexity. The brain and the nerves constitute a whole — a 
system — however widely portions of the latter may diverge in 
their especial functions, and it is as impossible that the musical 



114 LANGUAGE . 

temperament, or that the elaborate and exquisitely sensuous 
system of the Caucasian could be united with the brain of the 
negro, as it would be to unite the color of the former with the 
legro structure. The negro, therefore, neither perceives nor 
can he give expression to music — he has neither the brain nor 
the delicacy of nerve nor the vocal organism that is essential 
to this faculty — all that is possible to him is a certain approx- 
imation through his wonderful powers of imitation, but which 
is less available to him in this respect perhaps than any other. 
His brain is much smaller, but his nerves are much larger, and 
his senses are consequently much more acute, and here is the 
cause of that " musical power" with which ignorant and mis- 
taken persons have endowed him. Music is felt by the nerves 
rather than perceived by the brain, in his feet as much as in 
his head, and with an intensity unknown and unfelt by whites. 
His imitative instinct enables him to rapidly acquire the lan- 
guage of his master, but he also loses it with similar rapidity. 
The negroes imported to the West India Islands, though liv- 
ing on large plantations, soon acquired the language of the 
few w T hites, so far as words were concerned, but an organic 
necessity compelled them to retain the structure of their origi- 
nal tongue. Thus, those in British islands spoke English, 
in French islands, French, etc., but the general structure re- 
mained the same in all, and now, when the external force 
applied by the several European governments has removed the 
control and guidance of the superior race, they are rapidly 
losing the words of their former masters, and in this as well as 
every other respect returning to their native Africanism. In 
Hayti, where the imitative capacity has little or nothing to 
stimulate it, this process is very rapid indeed, and could they 
be entirely isolated, the utter extinction of the French language 
would doubtless occur within the present century. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE SENSES. 

The senses are those special organisms that connect us with 
the outer world through which external impressions are re- 
ceived and transmitted to the brain — the great sensorium or 
centre of the nervous system. They are popularly designated 
as sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste, each having its 
own peculiar organism; some, as sight, exceedingly elaborate, 
and others, like taste, quite simple, being little more than a 
delicate expansion of nervous matter spread upon the tongue 
and lining the inner surface of the mouth. The nervous 
system includes the brain and the nerves, but is, in fact, an 
indivisible whole, of which the brain forms the centre, and the 
nerves the circumference, in exact proportion as we ascend in 
the scale of being. The centre of the nervous system is in- 
creased and the circumference diminished as the brain becomes 
larger and the nerves smaller. Among quadrupeds — the horse, 
for example — the nerves are enormously large in comparison 
with the brain of that animal ; and this holds good through- 
out, so that an intelligent physiologist might determine the 
possible capabilities of any of the higher order of animals by 
a simple comparison of the brain and nerves. And in the 
human creation a single skull of a Mongol, or Malay, or Ne- 
gro, and especially of the latter, should be quite sufficient tc 
enable a physiologist to comprehend the essential character of 
the race to which it belonged. True, he might, as has often 
happened, mistake it for an abnormal specimen of the Caucasian, 



116 THE SENSES. 

and thus display avast amount of learned nonsense of the Gall- 
Spurzheim order, but if he knew it to be an actual negro 
skull, and then compared it with that of the Caucasian, he should 
be able not only to determine the intellectual inferiority, but 
the vastly preponderating sensualism of the former. He would 
see that the relatively small cerebrum, and the large cerebel- 
lum, must be united with a corresponding development of the 
senses, and a comparatively dominating sensualism. The mere 
organism of the senses, of sight, hearing, etc., though of course 
differing widely from those of the Caucasian, it is not neces- 
sary to describe, for even in animals of the higher class there 
is a certain resemblance, and the student of anatomy studies 
the mechanism of the eye in the ox or horse as satisfactorily 
as in that of the human creature. 

The organisms while thus, in a sense, similar — of the eye,for 
example — in whites and negroes, is more elaborately and del- 
icately constituted in the case of the former, and therefore it is 
also vastly more liable to disease, to congenital defects, to 
strabismus, etc., and especially short-sightedness. The negro, 
on the contrary, rarely suffers from these things, or even from 
inflammation of the eyes, so common among white people, and 
though, in keeping with the imitative instinct of the race, the 
negro " preacher" dons spectacles as well as white neck-cloth, 
it may be doubted if there ever was a case of near-sightedness 
in the typical negro. Though in extreme old age they doubt- 
less lose the power of vision common to their youth, it is rare 
that negroes need spectacles at any age. The organism is 
supplied with a larger portion of nervous matter than in the 
case of the whites, and the function or sense is thus endowed 
with a strength and acuteness vastly greater than are the 
senses of the Caucasian. Travelers and others mingling among 
savages, Indians, negroes, etc., have observed the extraordi- 
nary power and acuteness of the external senses, and have 



THE SENSES. 117 

supposed that this was a result of their savage condition, 
which, calling for a constant exercise of these faculties, gave 
them an extraordinary development. And Pritchard, carry- 
ing this theory or notion to an extreme, inferred that men 
were originally created negroes, for the exigencies of savage 
life demanded, as he supposed, a black color as well as acute- 
ness of the senses! Doubtless the civilized negro of America 
ordinarily displays less strength and acuteness of sense than 
his wild brother of Africa, but he is born with the same facul- 
ties, and were the surrounding circumstances changed so as to 
call them into more active exercise, he would exhibit similar 
characteristics. 

The Almighty Creator, with infinite wisdom, has adapted 
all His creatures to the ends or purposes of their creation. 
The Caucasian or white man, with his large brain aiid elevated 
reasoning powers, is thus provided with all that is necessary 
to guard his safety and to increase his happiness. Inferior 
races, with smaller brains and feebler mental powers are en- 
dowed with strength and acuteness of the external senses which 
enable them to contend specifically with surrounding circum- 
stances and to provide for their safety. This is strikingly 
manifest in the North American Indian who marks or makes 
a trail in the forest which he follows with unerring confidence, 
though the eye of the white man sees nothing whatever. 
The descriptions of Indian character in Cooper's novels are in 
these respects perfectly correct and true to nature, as are 
all those of the I^dianized white man, Leather-Stocking, 
Havvkeye, etc. The one depends upon his senses — his sight, 
hearing, etc., the other on his powers of reasoning or reflec- 
tion, which in the end enable him to " sarcumvent" his Huron 
enemies and to win the" victory. Each, according to his "gifts," 
is able to fulfil the purposes of his creation, and while the supe- 
rior intelligence of the Caucasian is spreading that race, with 



118 THE SENSES . 

its benign and civilizing consequences, over the whole north- 
ern continent, the strength and acuteness of his senses have 
enabled the Indian to resist to a degree all these mighty forces 
for three hundred years. 

Some historians have advanced the notion that Rome was 
overrun by northern barbarians, similar to our North Amer- 
ican Indians, but if the mighty hordes led by Alaric and 
Genseric to the conquest of Italy, had been Indians, not one 
would have escaped to tell the tale of their destruction. A 
high civilization, rotten at heart, falls an easy conquest to 
ruder and more simple communities of the same race — thus, 
the effete and corrupt Roman aristocracy fell before the sim- 
ple and rude populations of Northern Europe, as the polished 
and scholastic Greeks had succumbed to the Romans, when 
the latter practised the simple and hardy virtues of their ear- 
lier history. In our own times we have seen Spain, long 
ruled over by an effete and worn-out aristocracy, sink from a 
first class to a fourth rate power, while France, relieved from 
the dead weight of " nobility," has in half a century become 
the leading power of the world. And if the English masses 
have not sufficient vitality to cast off the mighty pressure of a 
diseased and effete aristocracy by an internal reform like that 
which the French passed through in 1789, then it is certain 
that, at no distant day, the nation will fall a conquest to some 
external power that has greater vitality than itself, however 
deficient it may be in wealth and learning, and those refine- 
ments that pass for high civilization. But while nations ruled 
over by privileged classes thus carry within them the seeds of 
their own destruction, and sooner or later fall a conquest to 
ruder and simpler societies, the intellectual superiority of the 
white man always enables him to conquer inferior races, what- 
ever may be the disparity of numbers, and Clive with three 
thousand Europeans, attacking the Hindoo horde of one hun- 



THE SENSES. 119 

dred thousand, or Cortez invading Mexico with five hundred 
followers, amply illustrates the natural supremacy of the Cauca- 
sian race. But, on the contrary, if the Aztecs had had the 
intellectual capacity of the Caucasian superadded to their own 
specific qualities — the strength and acuteness of the senses — 
common to the native race, not alone would Cortez have failed 
to conquer them, but it may be doubted if all Europe, com- 
bined together for that purpose, could have accomplished it. 

There are no examples for testing the capabilities of negroes 
in these respects, for there is no instance in history where they 
have contested the supremacy of the white man, the insurrec- 
tion in Hayti having been the work of the " colored people" 
and mulattoes, and the negroes only forced into it by their fears 
after the outbreak was complete. But we have the actual 
physical facts as well as our every-day experience of the negro 
qualities, and therefore can arrive at positive truth when com- 
paring him with the superior race. The large distribution of 
nervous matter to the organs of sense and consequent domi- 
nating sensualism (not mere animalism), is the direct cause of 
that extreme sloth and indolence universal with the race. The 
small brain and limited reasoning power of the negro render 
him incapable of comprehending the wants of the future, while 
the sloth dependent on the dominating sensualism, together 
with strong animal appetites impelling him always to gross 
self-indulgence, render a master guide or protector essential to 
his own welfare. Indeed it may be matter of doubt which is 
the paramount cause of the negro's inability to provide for 
future necessities — his limited reasoning power or his indo- 
lence — his small brain or his dominating sensualism. It is a 
statistical fact that " free" negroes do not produce sufficient 
for their support, and consequently that they tend perpetually 
to extinction, and when it is remembered that the small brain 
and feeble intellectual power render them incapable of reason- 



120 THE SENSES. 

ing on the future rewards of self-denial, and that the large 
distribution of nervous matter in the organs of sense, and 
the consequent sensualism impels them to gross indulgence 
of the present, and moreover that they are in juxtaposition, 
and must contend with white people, then it is plain enough 
to see that it could not be otherwise, and that the total ex- 
tinction of these unfortunate beings is necessarily a question 
of time alone. 

But it is not the mere predominance of the senses, or the 
strength and acuteness of the sense which so broadly and rad- 
ically separates whites and negroes. They are entirely differ- 
ent in the manifestations of these qualities. As has been 
observed, there are few if any near-sighted negroes, or negroes 
with other defects of vision, and the sense of smell in negroes 
permits them to discriminate and to indicate the presence of 
the rattle snake, or other venomous serpents. And in respect 
to the sense of touch or feeling, the peculiarity of the negro 
nature is perhaps most remarkable of all. This sense in the 
white person, though universal of course, is mainly located in 
the hand and fingers. Sir Charles Bell, an eminent English 
surgeon, has written an interesting work — one of the Bridge- 
water treatises — on the flexibility and adaptation of the human 
hand, and other volumes might be given to the world without 
exhausting the subject. The universal law of adaptation, 
indeed, demands that the sense of touch, the flexibility of the 
hand, the delicacy of the fingers, should be in accord with the 
large brain and commanding intellect, otherwise the world 
itself would long since have come to a stand-still, and human 
invention ended with the antediluvians. It is true the struc- 
ture — the arrangement of the bones, muscles, tendons, etc., in 
short, the mere mechanism of the hand, is essential, but with- 
out the sense of feeling, or that delicacy of touch found only 



THE SENSES . 121 

in the fingers of the Caucasian, the mechanical perfections of 
the hand would be comparatively useless. 

All the nice manipulations in surgery, in the arts, in paint- 
ing, statuary, and the thousands of delicate fabrics seen every 
day and all about us, demand both intellect and delicacy of 
hand, and these, too, in that complete perfection found alone 
in the Caucasian. The sense of touch, on the contrary, in the 
negro is not in the hand or fingers, or only partially so, but 
spreads all over the surface and envelops the entire person. 
The hand itself, in its mere mechanism, is incompatible with 
delicate manipulation. The coarse, blunt, webbed fingers of 
the negress, for example, even if we could imagine delicacy of 
touch and intellect to direct, could not in any length of time 
or millions of years be brought to produce those delicate fab- 
rics or work those exquisite embroideries which constitute the 
pursuits or make up the amusements of the Caucasian female. 
The mechanism of the negro hand, the absence or rather the 
obtuseness of the sense of touch in the fingers, and the limited 
negro intellect, therefore, utterly forbid that negroes shall be 
mechanics, except it be in those grosser trades, such as coop- 
ers, blacksmiths, etc., which need little more than muscular 
strength and industry to practice them. But the sense of 
touch, though feeble in the hand or fingers, is none the less 
largely developed as are the other senses of the negro, and 
spreads over the whole surface of the body. This is witnessed 
every day at the South, where whipping, as with Northern 
children, is the ordinary punishment of negroes. As in all 
other foolish notions that spring from the one great misconcep- 
tion — that negroes have the same nature as white people, the 
" anti-slavery" people of the North and of Europe labor under 
a ludicrous mistake in respect to this matter. They take their 
notions of flogging from the practice of the British army and 
the Russian knout, where strong men are cut to pieces by the 

6 



122 THE SENSES. 

" cat" or beaten to death by clubs, and they suppose that pre- 
cisely similar barbarity is practiced on the " poor slave." And 
the runaway negro has doubtless added to these notions, 
perhaps, without meaning it. At Abolition conventicles he is 
expected, of course, to horrify the crowd with awful tales of 
his sufferings, but having always had plenty to eat and never 
overworked, he has really nothing to fall back on but the 
" cruel whippings," which the imaginations of the former read- 
ily transform into their own notions, but which, in fact, corres- 
pond to that which they deal out to their own children with- 
out a moment's compunction. The sensibility of the negro 
skin closely resembles that of childhood, and while there are 
doubtless cases of great barbarity in these respects, as we all 
know there are in cases of children, the ordinary flogging of 
negroes is much the same as that which parents, guardians, 
teachers, etc., deal out to white children, and the " terrible 
lash" so dolefully gloated over by the ignorant and deluded 
usually dwindles down into a petty switch in reality. But 
it is painful to the negro, perhaps more so than hanging would 
be, for while the local susceptibility of the skin makes him feel 
the slightest punishment in this respect, the obtuse sensibility 
of the brain and nervous system generally would enable him, 
as is often manifest,, to bear hanging very well. Those who 
can remember being flogged in childhood will also remember 
the great pain that it gave them, though now in their adult 
age they would laugh at such a thing. The negro is a child 
forever, a child in many respects in his physical as well as his 
mental nature, and the flogging of the negro of fifty does not 
differ much, if any, from the flogging of a child of ten, and 
while the British soldier or Russian would receive his three 
hundred lashes without wincing, the big burly negro will yell 
more furiously than a school-boy when he receives a dozen 
Cuts with an ordinary switch. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE BRAIN. 

The brain is the seat or the centre of the intellect, in short, 
the mental organism. The " school men" believed that mind, 
intellect, the reasoning faculty, whatever we may term it, had 
no locality or organism, but, on the contrary, was some impal- 
pable, shadowy, unfixed principle that existed as much in the 
feet or hands as in any other portion of the body. And even 
Locke and Bacon, while they promulgated the great truths of 
inductive philosophy, were not sufficiently grounded in its ele- 
mentary principles to understand clearly the foundation of 
their own doctrines. Xor did Dugald Stuart, Dr. Brown, or 
even the great Kant, of more modern times, understand any 
better the fixed truths on which rest the vast and imperfect 
systems of philosophy which they labored so assiduously to 
build up in their day. It remained for Gall, Spurzheim, and 
their followers to do this — to demonstrate certain great ele- 
mentary truths which form a foundation, eternal as time itself 
— for the mental phenomena to rest upon, and whatever ad- 
vance may be made hereafter in the study of these phenomena, 
its basis is immovable. Metaphysicians were wont to shut 
themselves up in their libraries and to analyze their own emo- 
tions, etc., which when noted down, became afterwards the 
material for ponderous lectures or the still more ponderous 
volumes inflicted on society. Rarely, perhaps, were these spec- 
ulations connected with the brain — indeed it is a rare thing to 
find a physiologist indulging in metaphysical speculation, while 



124 THE BRAIN. 

the most famous among the " philosophers" were pro foundly 
ignorant of that organ, though they fancied they knew all 
about its functions ! The man that should undertake to write 
a treatise on respiration, and at the same time was utterly 
ignorant of the structure of the lungs, or to give a lecture on 
the circulation, while he knew nothing of the blood vessels, 
would certainly be laughed at, and yet innumerable volumes 
have been written, and continue to be written,on the functions 
of the brain or on " moral and mental philosophy," by men 
who never saw a human brain in all their lives ! Gall and 
Spurzheim did, therefore^ a great good to the world when they 
began their investigations of the laws of the mind, by the 
study of the brain itself as the first and absolutely essential 
step to be taken in these investigations. It is true, they, and 
especially their followers, sought to set up a fancy science 
under the name of Phrenology, and the former thus, to a great 
extent, neutralized a reputation which otherwise would have 
secured the respect of the scientific world. And it is also true 
that others before them had recognized the same truths with 
more or less distinctness, but it is certain that Gall and Spurz- 
heim demonstrated and j^laced beyond doubt the great, vital, 
and essential truth that the brain is the organ of the mind, and 
that the mental capacity, other things being equal, is in exact 
proportion to the size of the brain relatively with the body. 
This truth holds good throughout the animal world, and the 
intelligence of any given animal or species' of animal, is always 
in keeping with the size of the brain when compared with the 
size of the body. 

The brain is composed of anterior and posterior portions — 
of the cerebrum and the cerebellum — the first the centre of in- 
telligence, the latter of sensation, or the first the seat of the 
intellect, and the latter of the animal instincts, and the propor- 
tions they bear to each other determines the character. As the 



THE BRAIN". 125 

anterior portion is enlarged and the posterior diminished the 
creature ascends, or as the anterior portion is diminished and 
the posterior portion enlarged it descends, in the scale of being. 
These are the general laws governing men and animals. There 
is intelligence in proportion to the size of the brain compared 
with that of the body, and in the former there is intellectual 
capacity — latent or real — in proportion to the enlarged cere- 
brum and diminished cerebellum. It is true we see every day 
seeming contradictions to the laws in question, but they are 
not so, not even exceptions, for they are not general but uni- 
versal. Every day we meet people with small heads and great 
intelligence, with large heads and large stupidities, but a closer 
examination may disclose the truth that the seemingly small 
head is all brain, all cerebrum, all in front of the ears, while 
the large one is all behind, and only reveals a largely developed 
animalism. And even when this is not sufficient to explain 
the seeming anomaly, there is a vast and inexhaustible field 
for conjecture — of accident — where misapplied or undeveloped 
powers have been the sport of circumstances. A man may 
have a large brain, great natural powers, in truth, genius of 
the most glorious kind, and the world remain in total ignor- 
ance of the fact, and among the countless millions of Europe 
doomed generation after generation to a profound animalism, 
there doubtless have been many " mute inglorious Miltons," 
who have lived and died and made no sign of the Divinity 
within. On the contrary, there have been men of much dis- 
tinction — of great usefulness to their fellows and to the gen- 
erations after them, who, naturally considered, were *on the 
dead level of the race, but by their industry, perseverance, and 
energy have left undying names to posterity. Then, again, 
circumstances have made men great. An epoch in the annals 
of a nation — great and stirring events in the life of a people — 
stimulate and call into exercise qualities and capacities that 



126 THE BRAIN . 

make men famous, who otherwise would not be heard of. Our 
own great revolutionary period furnished examples of this, and 
still later, we have Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and their 
senatorial cotemporaries, who many doubtless think will 
never be equalled, though their equals in fret are in the senate 
now, and only need similar circumstances to manifest that 
equality. 

The organism of the race — the species — whether human or 
animal, never changes or varies from that eternal type fixed 
from the beginning by the hand of God; and men, therefore, 
are now, in their natural capacities what they always have 
been and always will be, whatever the external circumstances 
that may control or modify the development of these capaci- 
ties. And the brain being the organ or organism of the mind, 
as the eye is of the sight or the ear of the sense of hearing, it 
may be measured and tested, and its capabilities determined, 
with as entire accuracy as any other function or faculty. Not, 
it is true, as the phrenologists or craniologists contend, that the 
brain reveals the character of individuals of the same species, 
but the character of the species itself, and its relative capabil- 
ities when contrasted with other races or species of men. 
This is beyond doubt or question, or will be beyond doubt or 
question with all those who understand it, and taking the 
Caucasian as the standard or test, the capabilities of the Mon- 
gol, the Malay, the Aboriginal American, or negro, may be 
determined with as absolute certainty as the color of their 
skins or any other mere physical quality. The brain of the 
Caucasian averages ninety-two cubic inches, that of the negro 
seventy-five to eighty-five inches, while the bodily proportions 
can scarcely be said to vary. There are great variations among 
whites as to size — there are giants as well as dwarfs, and 
quite as great variety in the form, — from the " lean and 
hungry Cassius," to the rounded proportions of a Falstaff or 



THE BRAIN. 127 

Daniel Lambert. But on a Southern plantation of a thousand 
negroes, sex and age are the only difference or the principal dif- 
ference that one sees, and a stranger would find some trouble 
to recognize any other, or at all events to distinguish faces. 
The brain of the negro corresponds in this respect with the 
body, and though there are doubtless cases where there is 
some slight difference, there seems to be none of those wide 
departures witnessed in these respects among whites. 

The material, the fibre or texture of the brain itself is li±tl« 
understood, and though it is quite likely that what we oaB 
genius is attended by a corresponding delicacy or fineness of 
texture in the nervous mass, and future exploration in this 
abstruse matter may reveal to us important truths, at this time 
little is known in regard to the brain except the great funda- 
mental and universal law that, in proportion to its size rela- 
tively with that of the body is there intellectual power, actual 
or latent. Many, doubtless, fancy that there are immense dif- 
ferences in men in this respect — that a Webster, or Clay, or 
Bonaparte are vastly superior to common men — but they have 
only to remember that the brain is the organ of the intellect, to 
see its fallacy. The notion has sprung from the habitudes of 
European society, where a man clothed in the pomp and parade 
of high rank is supposed to be vastly and immeasurably supe- 
rior to his fellows, while, in truth, most of these, or, at all 
events many of these are absolutely (naturally) inferior to the 
base multitudes that prostrate themselves in the dust at their 
feet. Nevertheless, there are striking differences in these 
respects; not more so, however, than in strength of body, beauty 
of features, difference of hair, complexion, etc. But in the 
case of the negro there is an eternal sameness, a perpetual one- 
ness, the same color, the same hair, the same features, same 
size of the body, and the same volume of brain. All the phys- 
ical and moral facts that make up the negro being irresistibly 



128 THE BEAIN. 

lead to the conclusion that the Almighty Creator designed 
him for juxtaposition with the superior white man, and there- 
fore such a thing as a negro ^genius — a poet, inventor, or one 
having any originality of any kind whatever — is totally un- 
necessary, as they are totally unknown in the experience of 
mankind. Some, with more or less white blood, have exhib- 
ited more or less talent, possibly even have shown eccentric 
indications of genius, but among a million of adult typical 
negroes, there probably would not be a single brain that would 
vary from the others sufficiently to be detected by the eye, 
and therefore not an individual negro whose natural capacities 
were so much greater than those of his fellows as to be recog- 
nized by the reason. 

Such are briefly the leading and fundamental facts that con- 
stitute the mental organism and distinguish the intellectual 
character of races, that separate white men and negroes by an 
interval broader and deeper than in any other forms of human- 
ity, and render an attempted social equality not merely a great 
folly but a gross impiety. As has been stated, in exact pro- 
portion to the volume of brain, relatively with the size of body 
in men and animals, there is intelligence, and as the cerebrum 
or anterior portion predominates over the cerebellum or poste- 
rior portion, there is a corresponding predominance of intel- 
lectualism over animalism in the human races. The negro 
brain in its totality is ten to fifteen per cent, less than that of 
the Caucasian, while in its relations — the relatively large cere- 
bellum and small cerebrum — the inferiority of the mental 
organism is still more decided ; thus, while in mere volume, 
and therefore in the sum total of mental power, the negro is 
vastly inferior to the white man, the relative proportion of the 
brain and of the animal and intellectual natures adds still more 
to the Caucasian superiority, while it opens up before us abun- 
dant explanations of the diversified forms in which that supe- 



THE BRAIN. 129 

riority is continually manifested. There are no terms or mere 
words that enable us to express the absolute scientific superi- 
ority of the white man. We can only measure it, or indeed 
comprehend it, by comparison, but this will be sufficiently 
intelligible when it is said that the past history and present 
condition of both races correspond exactly with the size and 
form of the brain in each. The science, the literature, the 
progress, enlightenment and intellectual grandeur of the Cau- 
casian from the beginning of authentic history to this moment, 
and which have accompanied him from the banks of the Nile 
to those of the Mississippi, are all fitting revelations of the 
Caucasian brain, while the utter absence of all these things — 
the long night of darkness that enshrouds the negro being, 
and which is only broken in upon when in juxtaposition and 
permitted to imitate his master, is the result or necessity of his 
mental organism. 

There being nothing superior to the Caucasian, it may be 
said that he is endowed with unlimited powers ; that is, while 
the mental organism remains the same, his powers of acquisi- 
tion and the increase of his knowledge have no limit. A gen- 
eration in the exercise of its faculties acquires a certain amount 
of knowledge ; this is transmitted to the next ; it, in turn, 
adds its proportion, and so on, each generation in its turn 
accepting the knowledge of its progenitors and transmitting 
with its own acquisitions the sum total to its successors. This 
is called civilization, and we can suppose no limit to it, except 
it be in the destruction of the existing order and a new creation. 
On the contrary, the negro brain is incapable of grasping ideas, 
or what we call abstract truths, as absolutely so as the white 
child, indeed as necessarily incapable of such a thing as for a per- 
son to see without eyes, or hear without ears. In contact with, 
and permitted to imitate the white man, the negro learns to read, 
to write, to make speeches, to preach, to edit newspapers, etc., 

6* 



130 THE BRAIN, 

but all this is like that of the boy of ten or twelve who debates 
a la Webster or declaims from Demosthenes. People ignor- 
ant of the negro mistake this borrowed for real knowledge, as 
one ignorant of metals may have a brass watch imposed on 
him for a golden one. The negro is therefore incapable of 
progress, a single generation being capable of all that millions 
of generations are, and those populations in Africa isolated 
from white men are exactly now as they were when the He- 
brews escaped from Egypt, and where they must be millions 
of years hence, if left to themselves. Of course this is no mere 
opinion or conjecture of the author. It is a necessity of the 
negro being — a consequence of the negro structure — a fixed 
and eternally inseparable result of the mental organism, which 
without a re-creation — another brain — could no more be other- 
wise than water could run up hill, or a reversal of the law of 
gravitation in any respect could be possible. But people, 
ignorant of the elementary principles of science as well as of 
the nature of the negro, fancy that this is quite possible ; that, 
however inferior the organism of the negro in these respects, 
it is the result of many centuries of savagery and " slavery," 
and therefore if he were made " free," given the same rights 
with the same chances for mental cultivation, that the brain 
might gradually alter and become like that of the white man ! 
This involves gross impiety, if it were not the offspring of 
ignorance and folly, for it supposes that chance and human 
forces are more potent than the Almighty Creator, whose 
work is thus the sport of circumstances. They would seek by 
stimulating the mind to add ten per cent, to the negro brain — 
then to add to the cerebrum while they diminished the cere- 
bellum — certainly a work of much greater magnitude than 
changing the color of the negro skin ; but even the most igno- 
rant or the most impious among these people would scarcely 
undertake the latter operation. If reason could at all enter 



THE BRAIN. 131 

into the matter, it would surely be more reasonable to suppose 
that mind might be changed by acting on matter, rather than 
the reverse, and therefore it would be better to change the 
color of the skin, as the first, as it would also be the most prac- 
ticable,step to be taken in this grand undertaking of setting 
aside the Creator and re-creating the negro. But, after all, 
their labors would fail— after they had changed the color, after 
they had increased the volume of the brain and duly modified 
its relations as well as altered its texture— in short, when they 
had turned him into a white man, then all would be in vain, 
for such a brain could no more be born of a negress than an 
elephant could be! 



CHAPTER XII. 

GENERAL SUM. MARY. 

In the several preceding chapters, those outward character- 
istics that specifically distinguish the negro have been briefly 
considered. It has been shown that color, the hair, the figure, 
the brain, etc., are simply facts out of many millions of facts 
that separate the races ; that each and all of them are original, 
invariable, and everlasting, and the exception, or the absence 
of any of them, or of any of the associated facts not enumera- 
ted^ any time,in the case of a single individual or any gener- 
ation, or under any possible circumstances of time, climate, or 
external agencies whatever, is, or would be, necessarily impos- 
sible. Nature is always true to herself, and even in those 
abnormal specimens sometimes presented to our observation — 
those so-called monstrosities — there is, properly speaking, no 
departure from her original designs, or from those fixed and 
eternal laws that govern organic life. We sometimes see 
Albinos, but except a certain tinge to the color, itself totally 
unlike any color in other races, the absolute negro, that i the 
millions of facts that constitute the negro being, are un- 
touched. We witness all kinds of abnormal development in 
our own race, in animals, in the vegetable world, in all the 
innumerable beings and things that surround us. For example 
— let any one spend an autumn day in the forest, and turn his 
attention to the strange and often ludicrous sights that sur- 
round him. It often seems as if nature delighted herself in 
u eating odd and uncouth shapes, as if intended for relaxation 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 133 

and relief from her graver and grander labors. But even here 
there is no violation of the higher law — the order of nature 
though very often interrupted by accident, is never contra- 
dicted — the abnormal development, the most uncouth and mon- 
strous consequences are still pervaded by the eternal decree 
stamped upon the whole universe, that forbids forever any 
change in the minutest atom of this mighty mass of life. The 
Albino, the deformed or monstrous Negro, the seemingly wide 
departure from the normal standard, still obeys the higher 
law. All the peculiarities that distinguish him from his race 
are sui generis, without any approximation or resemblance to 
the white man. So, too, with the latter, and so, too, with all 
monstrosities in the'lower animals. The things that constitute 
the monstrosity, that separate the creature, Or seem to do so, 
from his own kind, separate him also from other species, 
whether of men or animals. The eternal gulf, the impassable 
barrier, the decreed limits fixed by the Creator himself, are 
never passed. A negro, with the color, or the hair, or the 
language, or the brain, or the sense of touch, or taste, or sight 
of the Caucasian, would not be a monstrosity but an impossi- 
bility. He might differ very widely from his own race in any 
one. of these things, as we actually witness in the case of 
Albinos, in fact might retain scarcely any outward resemblance 
to his kind, and yet exist ; but none has ever had, or ever will 
have, an existence that has any thing in common with the 
white man, for that would contradict the universal order of 
God himself. 

Such being the fact, all that is external or tangible to the 
sense being thus widely, immeasurably, and indestructibly 
different from the Caucasian or white man, it is obvious that, 
in all beyond the outer surface, the same relative differences 
must exist. It was originally intended to demonstrate this in 
detail — to show the actual anatomical facts and structural dif- 



134 GENERAL SUMMARY. 

ferences in the organs, the tissues, the systems, down to the 
minutest atom of the bodily structure. It was designed to 
present the reader with numerous plates, showing all this — 
the minutest particle, the single globule of blood, even, 
painted after the employment of the microscope, being suffi- 
ciently palpable to the sense, to show that the primordial 
atoms of the negro structure are as specifically, and relatively 
as widely, different from the white man's as the color, the hair, 
or any of those outward qualities that confront us daily in the 
streets. But this would have added so much to the expense 
of the work, as to often place it out of the reach of the day 
laborer and working man, those who alone, or mainly, need to 
understand the great " anti-slavery" imposture of our times, 
and the world-wide conspiracy against their freedom, man- 
hood and happiness, which has so long held them in abject 
submission to its clamorous pretences of philanthropy and hu- 
manity. Nor is it at all essential. A moment's reflection or 
consideration is quite sufficient to convince any rational mind 
that the outward differences must have their counterpart in 
the entire structure. Of course any thing exceptional — a blem- 
ish, a congenital deformity on the surface — has no correspond- 
ing relation with the interior, but that which is specific, uni- 
form, and invariable, as the color, the hair, the features, etc., 
must of necessity pervade the tout ensemble of being, whether 
human, animal, or vegetable. The apple, pear, peach, etc., 
have their own specific features externally, and their corre- 
sponding qualities internally. The shad differs from the salmon 
in its absolute structure equally with its outward appearance. 
The whole anatomical arrangement of the horse differs as 
widely from that of the ass as the outward features vary, 
And the entire bodily structure of the negro, down to the mi- 
nutest atom of elementary matter, differs just as widely, of 
course, as the color of the skin or other external qualities, from 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 135 

those of the white man. It is equally palpable to the reason 
that the nature of the negro, his instincts, all the faculties of 
his mind, and all the functions of his body, are pervaded by 
the same or by relative differences from those of the Caucasian. 
To suppose otherwise is not to suppose a monstrosity, for, as 
has been remarked, monstrosities, however wide the departure 
from the normal standard, are sui generis, without any approx- 
imation to different beings — but such things are simply impos- 
sible. As it is plainly impossible that any being could exist 
half like or half unlike any other creature, so, too, it is obvious 
that beings with different structures could not possess the 
same qualities or manifest the same nature. Can any one 
imagine an apple with the qualities of the pear or peach, or 
even of another apple that differed from it in its material struc- 
ture? Can it be supposed that a lion could ever have the 
nature of the tiger, or panther, or cat, or of any of the felina ? 
Can it be. believed that a bull-dog ever manifested the nature 
of a hound, or that the mastiff or spaniel could be made to 
exhibit the specific qualities of either ? No, indeed. Nature 
makes no mistakes, nor does the Almighty Master of life per- 
mit His creatures to violate or transcend His eternal decrees. 

It being, therefore, an invariable, indestructible, and eternal 
law, that the outward qualities are exactly harmonized with 
the interior structure down to the minutest atom of elemen- 
tary particles and equally invariable and everlasting that the 
organism is in harmonious correspondence with the functions, 
the instincts, in a word, the nature, we are able to understand, 
with absolute certainty, the specific qualities, and to approach 
with tolerable certainty the relative differences and actual in- 
terval that separate the white and black races. The figures 
of the plate in the opening of this work indicate these vital 
and all-important truths. 

The first figure exhibits the typical Caucasian, not the culti- 



136 GENERAL SUMMARY. 

vated man of our time, but the " barbarian," the Oriental— the 
cotemporary with David, Solomon, Cyrus, and others of re- 
mote antiquity. The second figure is the Negro of the same 
period, as found on the monuments, and, at the present time, in 
all those portions of Africa where the negro is isolated, and 
there are no debris of other races existing among them. 
By himself he never changes in his outward manifestations. 
One generation is as a million of generations, and therefore the 
thousands now annually imported into Cuba are seen to be 
just as this figure represents him four thousand years ago. 

Nor is the figure of the Caucasian changed, for though the 
American of to-day is at an immeasurable distance in knowl- 
edge, the actual physical and intellectual man remains the 
same as this figure represents him four thousand years ago. 
Both figures have the same color, and yet the specific differ- 
ences are none the less palpable — the Caucasian and Negro 
type being equally distinct and widely different. 

The third figure is an American — a white man of to-day — 
whose intellectual development, refinement of mind and man- 
ners, costume and habitudes are widely different; nevertheless, 
the physical qualities and specific capabilities are the same as 
those of his Oriental ancestors of by-gone generations. 

The fourth figure is an American Negro, but a typical 
Negro without taint or admixture with other races. His fea- 
tures, moulded and softened by juxtaposition with the Cauca- 
sian, present a great improvement, certainly, over the isolated 
or African type, but the organism, the actual physical and 
mental nature remains the same. 

The white man is least and the negro most affected by exter- 
nal agents, such as climate, time, systems of government, etc. 
The fourth figure in contrast with the isolated negro of Africa, 
exhibits a certain degree of improvement, progress, or advance 
that illustrates the actual capabilities of the race when placed 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 137 

under circumstances favorable fo its development. The size 
of the brain, the actual organism and absolute nature, of course, 
remains unaltered, just as all these things remain unchanged 
and unchangeable in the uneducated white laborer of our own 
times ; but the negro, in juxtaposition with the superior race, 
becomes educated, and all his latent capabilities fully devel- 
oped. Thus, while the color, the hair, the entire organism is 
just what it was thousands of years ago, and what it must be 
forever, or as long as the present order of creation continues, 
there is a certain modification in the features and still greater 
changes in the expression. The uncouth and uneducated Eu- 
ropean laborer contrasted with the educated classes, or with the 
generality of Americans, exhibits a wide difference, not so 
much in the features as in the expression ; and though the negro 
in Africa is in a far more natural position, relatively consid- 
ered, than the European laborer, the negro in our midst ex- 
hibits, perhaps, even a greater difference over his isolated 
brother. And if we suppose, for a moment, that the masses 
of English laborers Avere educated, fed on the same fare, and 
subject to the same circumstances as the English nobles, then 
we may form a reasonable estimate of the relative advance of 
the American over the African negro. The former would dif- 
fer in no respect whatever from the privileged and educated 
class, and if all the negroes of Africa were brought here or 
were placed in juxtaposition and natural relation with the 
superior race, they would exhibit the same characteristics com- 
mon to our so-called slaves, and the fourth figure in this plate 
would doubtless present a typical illustration of them. A 
good many people, ignorant of the laws of organism, suppose 
that our negro population have made a great advance over 
the wild and barbarous tribes of Africa, and, as shown by the 
second and fourth figures in the plate, this is so, but it is only 
in the outward expression, while the essential nature is ever 



138 GENERAL SUMMARY. 

the same. The negro infant, for example, brought from 
Africa and placed under existing circumstances in Mississippi, 
would be represented by the fourth figure, while the infant 
born here and carried to Africa to grow up with the wild 
tribes of the interior, would, on the contrary, be illustrated by 
the second figure of the plate. 

There are a multitude of moral considerations involved, of 
course, and that cannot be measured or tested by material 
illustrations, but we may form a reasonable estimate of the 
superiority of condition and of the greater happiness of the 
negro over his African brethren, by a simple comparison 
of these figures. As has been observed, it corresponds with 
the difference between the educated and non-educated white 
man, but it is greater, for the negro is more affected by 
external circumstances, and therefore while the actual size and 
relations of the negro brain and the specific nature of the 
negro are unalterable, the outward form of his head as well as 
the expression of his face is strikingly improved over that of 
the typical African. 

In general terms, it may be said, that the " American slave" 
is educated and the isolated African negro is not ; that the 
former is civilized and the latter a barbarian ; that, though in 
a sense in a natural position (for he multiplies in Africa), he is 
in his normal condition only when in juxtaposition and natural 
relation to the superior white man. It is sometimes supposed 
that the negro is incapable of progress, and so, of course, he 
is when isolated from the superior race, but when placed in 
his normal condition, and his imitative capacities called into 
action, he is capable of progress to a certain extent. God, 
while endowing him with widely different and vastly inferior 
faculties, has gifted him with imitative capacities so admirable, 
that those who are ignorant of his real nature mistake them 
for those of the white man. Like children, like the inferioi 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 139 

animals, and like all other inferior races, he naturally imitates 
the superior being ; but beyond this general tendency common 
to all subordinate creatures, there is a peculiar capacity in the 
negro in this respect, which, more than anything else, war- 
rants us in terming it the specific feature of the race. Placed 
in his normal condition, he becomes intelligent, civilized, pious, 
industrious, and if his master is a man of refined mind and 
dainty habits, the negro becomes so, even more than children 
who imitate the habitudes of their parents. Thus, it will be 
seen on Southern plantations generally, that they correspond 
with their masters, and if the habits and practices of the for- 
mer are moral and Christian-like, the negroes approximate to 
the same standard. On the contrary, if they are under the 
guidance of coarse and brutal masters, or are left with nothing 
to imitate but the habits of a gross and tyrannical overseer, 
then they become idle, vicious, and thieving ; and take every 
chance that offers to run away from their homes. 

In speaking of negro education, of course no such meaning 
as that applied to white people is intended. Reading, writing, 
arithmetic, etc., have no relation or connection with the devel- 
opment of the negro powers. He simply needs to be in a 
position where the imitative capacity with which God has so 
beneficently endowed him is most completely called into action, 
and, as has been observed, he then becomes an industrious, 
moral, and well-behaved creature, or he is idle, sensual, vicious 
and worthless, just as the master or overseer pleases to make 
him. There are doubtless exceptional instances, but with* all 
the wide-spread and boundless effort of the ignorant and de- 
luded people in England and America to seduce them from 
their homes, there are probably but few negroes — real negroes 
— who ever abandoned their masters, unless their education 
had been neglected. The instinct of the negro is obedience to 
his master, and the strongest affection of his nature — far above 



140 GENERAL SUMMARY. 

that for \iis wife or offspring— is for the master who feeds, 
guides, and cares for him, indeed is his Providence ; and his 
utter horror of migration, unless it be with his master, these 
qualities, so dominant m the negro, would be or might be 
made a barrier of protection against outside seductions, were 
they properly understood and appreciated by those having 
them in charge. This negro education, civilization, progress 
in fact, which the negro is capable of when in his normal con- 
dition, and his imitative capacities are permitted a healthy de- 
velopment, of course is rapidly lost when isolated from the 
white man. If the four millions now in our midst were sud- 
denly left to themselves, but a few years— probably within 
fifty— everything that now distinguishes them— that is, all 
that they have imitated from the superior race — would become 
extinct. 

Leaving out of the consideration mulattoes and mongrels, 
and taking into view simply the negro — the four millions of 
negroes of untainted blood which now exist in our midst — it 
is reasonable to say that, fifty years hence, there would not be 
one that would speak his present language, that would be a 
Christian, that would retain his name, or any other thing what- 
ever which he now possesses and has imitated from his mas- 
ters. This may seem a startling declaration to many who live 
in daily contact with these people, while by those ignorant and 
deplorably deluded parties who fancy that they are engaged in 
a work of humanity when seeking to undo the work of the 
Almighty Creator, by turning black into white and the negro 
into a Caucasian, it will scarcely be understood ; but it in- 
volves a truth that may be easily and plainly illustrated. A 
very large portion of our negroes are the children and 
grandchildren of those brought from Africa, and not a few, 
perhaps, were themselves brought in by the " slave trade," 
which it will be remembered was continued down to 1808. 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 141 

Now of all these there probably is not one that can speak 
the language of his progenitors, not one that retains his Afri- 
can religion or the slightest relic of African history or tradition, 
not one with even an African name, and if they have thus rap- 
idly lost all that they possessed of their own, that was original 
and specific, of course, if isolated from their masters, they would 
still more rapidly lose that which they have imitated from a 
superior race. . 

Such, then, is the negro— the lowest in the scale as the Cau- 
casian is the most elevated in the human creation— a creature 
not degraded— for none of God's creatures are degraded— but 
that is widely different and vastly subordinate to the elabor- 
ately organized and highly endowed white man. The specific 
qualities are not matters of opinion but of fact, that appeal to 
our senses at every step, but the specific differences and actual 
intervals that separate races, though often susceptible of suc- 
cessful illustrations, must to a great extent be determined by 
experience. The author has attempted to define these differ- 
ences in some essential respects, and believes he has succeeded 
with sufficient exactitude to warrant correct conclusions in 
respect to the almost innumerable things that could not be 
discussed nor even alluded to in a work of this kind. We 
have this race among us— they or their descendants must re- 
main an element of our population forever. It is doubtless the 
design of the Almighty that the Caucasian and negro, under 
certain circumstances which will be considered elsewhere, 
should exist in juxtaposition, and therefore a specific knowl- 
edge of this race, and its true relations to our own, is the most 
vital and indeed transcendent question or consideration that 
was ever presented to a civilized and Christian people. Nor 
can this be delayed or pushed aside, for even now the nation 
is rapidly drifting into serious difficulties and possibly terrible 
calamities, in consequence of that wide-spread ignorance and 



142 GENERAL SUMMARY. 

misconception prevalent in regard to the negro's nature and his 
true relations to the white man. The blind and stupid warfare 
wao-ed so long upon the domestic institutions of the South, has 
doubtless thus far injured the negro most, and it may be de- 
monstrated with ease that the worst and most brutal master 
ever known could not inflict so much misery on the negro as 
the so-called friend of freedom, who, in utter ignorance of the 
negro nature, would force him to live out the life of a widely 
different being. But the time has come when this ignorance 
and delusion threatens to involve the whole framework of 
American society, and nothing but the simple truth — the re- 
cognition of the actual and unchangeable facts fixed eternally 
by the hand of God, can save the nation from dire calamities. 



JE> A. R T II. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 

All the generic and specific forms of life are governed 
by their own peculiar laws of interunion, and hybridism or 
hybridity is therefore a phenomenon of varying character, 
having, it is true, certain resemblances in those instances 
which approach each other, but absolutely different in all cases. 
Naturalists have sometimes made great blunders in this re- 
spect, for they have assumed that hybridism was governed by 
the same laws in all cases, and therefore sought its application 
or inferred its presence in instances the most remote and con- 
tradictory. The most extraordinary, and, indeed, inexcusable 
instance of the kind has been seen in the efforts made to con- 
found the distinctions of race, and to pervert truth into the 
most shameful and what would seem to be the most palpable 
falsehoods. It has been assumed by naturalists of high char- 
acter that different genera never produce offspring, that the 
offspring of different species are incapable of reproduction, 
and that varieties are unlimited in their powers of virility. 
If, therefore, there were doubt in respect to the character of 
certain (supposed) genera, and it was found that offspring fol- 
lowed a conjunction of sexes, in this particular instance, it 
"was inferred that they were merely different species. And if 
the product or progeny of these species were found to be 



144 MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 

equally virile, then it was inferred that they were all originally 
of the same species, and nothing but varieties. This test, so 
simple that it can hardly be mistaken, serves with sufficient 
accuracy to determine the real character, and when the natur- 
alist properly applies the laws of hybridity, that is, admits a 
modification of these laws in all cases or in all the different 
genera subjected to his examination, then he is armed with suf- 
ficient data to render his labors accurate and effective. But 
however pains-taking or correct in other particulars, when he 
assumes that hybridity is a unit, and rigidly applies this in all 
cases, or to families widely remote in other respects, his labors, 
from this defect, must be comparatively valueless. 

The instance already referred to, where hybridity was thus 
presented, was as follows : — The mule, as is well-known, is the 
offspring of the horse and ass. It does not, in its turn, repro- 
duce itself, therefore the horse and ass were different species. 
Prichard and others applied this test, or marked this test, in 
the case of human beings, of whites and negroes, and proved 
by it that they were of the same species. It was seen that 
white men cohabited with negro women, and the offspring in 
turn, reproduced itself, and consequently that the parents were 
of the same species. Or, as this has passed as current coin 
hitherto, and seemed perfectly satisfactory, indeed wholly un- 
answerable to naturalists and men of science as well as others, 
it is best, perhaps, to place it in distinct and categorical terms 
before the reader. 1st. It is universally admitted by natural- 
ists that incapacity in the offspring to reproduce itself demon- 
strates the different species of the progenitors, while, on the 
contrary, a capacity in the offspring to beget offspring in its 
turn demonstrates similarity of species in the progenitors. 
2d. The mule, or the offspring of the horse and ass, does not 
reproduce itself, therefore the horse and ass are different species. 
3d. The mulatto offspring of the white man and negro woman 



MTJLATTOISM AND MONGEELISM. 145 

does beget offspring, therefore the white man and negro 
woman are of the same species. 

This was the assumption and the reasoning of Prichard and 
other European ethnologists, and if hybridity were a unit, or 
principle of rigid and uniform character in all cases, in human 
beings as in animals and vegetables, in the case of the white 
man and negress, exactly as in that of the horse and ass — then, 
indeed, would the inference seem unavoidable that whites and 
negroes constituted in fact a single species. But they were 
guilty of two fundamental errors in this matter — an error of 
fact, and an error of reasoning, or perhaps it would be more 
correct to say that both were errors of fact. At all events, 
facts that demonstrate difference of species in whites and negroes 
beyond possibility of doubt were distorted into proofs which 
seemed to demonstrate sameness or similarity of species with 
equal certainty. 

Hybridity, as has been said, is not a unit, is not a fixed, 
uniform law or principle. A moment's consideration is suffi- 
cient to convince any intelligent mind of this truth. Each 
form of life has necessarily its own character, its own specific 
qualities, and the laws governing its reproductive powers must 
be in correspondence, and just as differently manifested as any 
of its specific qualities. To suppose that the laws of the phe- 
nomena governing the reproductive functions of the horse and 
ass are exactly similar to those manifested in the case of 
human beings, is as absurd as to suppose that the term of ges- 
tation, the length of life, the mode of their locomotion, or any 
other qualities — should be exactly the same in both cases. 
But nothing more need be said. It is perfectly obvious that the 
laws of reproduction must be radically different in the human 
creatures, and therefore the inference of Pritchard and others, 
that whites and negroes were of the same species, because the 
mulatto, unlike the mule, did reproduce itself, is simply absurd. 

7 



146 MULATTOISM AND MONGEELISM. 

But they were still farther and still more vitally mistaken in 
respect to their assumptions of fact. The mulatto, literally 
speaking, or in the ordinary sense, does beget offspring, but 
mulattoism is as positively sterile as muleism. The phenom- 
enon of hybridity is manifested, as has been stated, in confor- 
mity with the nature of the beings concerned, and as the human 
creatures are separated by an almost measureless as well as 
impassable distance from the horse and ass, the laws of hybrid- 
ity are, of course, correspondingly different. Instead of a 
single generation, as in the animals referred to, sterility in the 
human creatures is embraced within four generations, where a 
boundary is arrived at as absolutely fixed and impassable as 
the single generation in the case of the former. 

But in order to understand the matter clearly, it is proposed 
to present the reader with the preliminary principles or facts, 
and inductive facts, that lead to this vital and all-important 
conclusion. It is all-important, not as demonstrating beyond 
doubt the vital and fundamental truth of distinct species, for 
that is a self-evident and indeed unavoidable truth that meets 
us at every step, and confronts our senses almost every hour 
or day of our lives. But mulattoism is a subject of stupend- 
ous importance in itself, and as the public are generally, and 
the " anti-slavery" writers especially, profoundly ignorant of 
it, and of all the laws that govern it, it is proposed to present 
the elementary principles or basis on which the whole subject 
rests.* 

1st. In the case of the white man cohabiting with the n egress, 
or " married" to a negro female, there will be a more limited 
progeny than if she were married to one of her own race. 

* The author has devoted much time and labor to this interesting subject,, 
and, together with his own and the observations of friends and correspond- 
ents, covering several thousand cases of the mixed blood, is able to deduce 
the general laws as stated in the text, and with entire confidence In their 
essential accuracy. 



MULATTOISM AND MONGKELISM. 147 

2d. The mulatto offspring of this connection intermarrying 
with other hybrids, will exhibit still less virility. 

3d. The offspring of the former again intermarrying with 
hybrids equally removed from the original parentage, shows a 
yet greater diminution of virile power. 

4th. By still intermarrying with hybrids, and of a corre- 
sponding remove, virility is correspondingly decreased. 

5th. Finally, the fourth generation of mulattoism is as abso- 
lutely sterile as muleism, and though there may be, at rare inter- 
vals, a possible exception, yet, in every practical sense, and for 
all the purposes of philosophic inquiry, it maybe assumed as the 
natural and impassable barrier of this abnormal and exceptional 
form of being. Of the essential correctness of these laws, or 
their data, almost every one living in the South, or perhaps in 
the larger cities of the Middle States, will be able to satisfy 
himself, if he will take the trouble to investigate the matter. 
He need not pursue the subject to its ultimate end, or to an 
extent necessary to arrive at all the results here presented, but 
he may, with comparatively trifling attention to it, satisfy 
himself of the tendencies involved, and that there is somewhere 
at least approximating to these laics a fixed and absolute bar- 
rier beyond which mulattoism can not exist. All the dealers 
in " slaves" and many " slave owners" know this from obser- 
vation and individual ' experience, and while entirely ignorant 
of any thing like the scientific formulae here presented, not a 
few among the former have actually stated it to the author in 
total unconsciousness that either he or any one else had ever 
thus formalized the essential character of mulattoism. But 
there is a very important feature of this matter, which, not 
understood or overlooked, may lead astray those who under- 
take its investigation. As has been said, hybridity is a pheno- 
menon to be tested and determined by the nature of the beings 
involved, and as it must be wholly different in the human 



148 MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 

creatures from that manifested in animals, and life is limited 
to four generations in the case of mulattoes, while the mule is 
confined to a single generation, so, too, must the mere quality or 
capacity of offspring be taken into consideration. The mule is 
remarkable for its powers of endurance — the mulatto for its 
fragility and incapacity to endure hardships. A northern 
climate is fatal to the negro, but the same climate is still more 
fatal to the hybrid, for his approximation to the Caucasian, 
and therefore capacity for a northern clime, is more than 
balanced by his constitutional tendencies to fragility and decay. 
Thus, of the ten thousand free negroes in Massachusetts, 
whom, " freedom" and climate together, were there no more 
external additions, must finally exterminate, the last man 
among" them would be a typical negro, or, at all events, 
approximating nearest to the typical standard. 

But it is in the female hybrid that this tendency to decay, 
or this vice of constitutional formation, is most apparent. 
Many of them are incapable of nourishing or taking care of 
their offspring, and, together with miscarriages and the numer- 
ous forms of disease connected with maternity, they are often 
found to have had a large number of children, not one of whom 
reached maturity. In taking into view, therefore, the sterility 
of mulattoism, we must have regard to its vices of formation 
as well as its limited virility, and that nature completes her 
processes, whether of growth or decay, through many dif- 
ferent forms ; and while mulattoism is as absolutely confined 
to four generations as mules are to a single generation, the 
former result is worked out through constitutional fragility 
and limited longevity as much, perhaps, as by an imperfect 
reproductive capacity. 

It is seen, therefore, that Prichard and the European ethno- 
logists made a radical mistake in this matter, and the very 
proofs which they relied on to establish their single-race theory, 



MTJLATTOISM AND MONGEELISM, 149 

or that whites and negroes were of the same species, actually 
prove the precisely opposite fact, that they are of different 
species. Not only is the phenomenon of hybridity different in 
human beings, from that peculiar to animals, but it differs in 
the different races of the former. The author's inquiries on 
this subject have been limited to the white and negro races or 
species, but the evidence presented to his observation, during 
the war with Mexico, was sufficiently authentic to warrant the 
conclusion that hybrids have greater tenacity of life, when the 
offspring of whites and aborigines, than in the case of whites 
and negroes. The former approximate closer to our own race, 
and it is only reasonable to siqmose that, in precise proportion 
to this fact, or to this starting point, is the hybrid offspring 
endowed with vitality ; and the same rule may be applied with 
equal certainty to all the other species of men. 

The sexual instinct, or the instinct of reproduction, is uni- 
versal in animal existence. It is that which multiplies its kind, 
that peoples the earth and fills the world with innumerable 
tribes of beings and endless processions of generations, each 
after its kind exhibiting the same qualities and subject to the 
same laws as the original types, without the slightest atom of 
change, though countless generations intervene between them. 
In respect to human beings endowed with reason and moral 
feeling, it is evidently designed by the Almighty Creator of 
all that the instinct of reproduction should be held in subjec- 
tion to those higher qualities. Nevertheless, instinct in re- 
spect to the sexual functions is strikingly manifest in the 
lower races of mankind. 

When white men — travelers and explorers — suddenly make 
their appearance in African villages, where they were never 
before seen, the females run and hide themselves from their 
sight ; and among the multitude of white prisoners captured 
by the aborigines of this continent, there has probably never 



150 MT7LATT0ISM AND MONGEELISM. 

been an instance of the violation of their persons by their 
savage captors. In respect to the so-called insurrection of 
negroes in Hayti or San Domingo, where, though all of the 
white blood, men, women, and children in their nurses' a-ms 
were remorselessly butchered by the terror-stricken blacks, 
there are no authenticated instances of the violation of white 
females. 

A negro insurrection — that is, a revolt of the negro from 
the rule of the white man, to obtain the liberty of the latter — 
is simply nonsensical : as entirely so as to suppose an insur- 
rection to obtain the complexion or any other physical attri- 
bute of the superior race ; but should some white miscreant, 
as attempted lately at Harper's Ferry, delude " slaves" to 
slaughter the families of their masters, there need he little or 
no apprehension in respect to that hideous and monstrous idea 
so prominent in abolition writings — the violation of the per- 
sons of white females. It is true, hybrids and mongrels might 
perpetrate such monstrous crimes, but the negro — the typical, 
pure-blooded negro — driven on by his fears and dread of the 
master race, would only seek its extermination, never the 
indulgence to him of such unnatural propensities. 

The instinct of reproduction in animals is governed by fixed 
laws ; but, as has been said, designed by the common Creator 
to be ruled by the reason and subjected to the moral affections 
in the higher human nature ; nevertheless, the ignorance and 
corruption of our social life have perverted these designs, and 
covered society with blotches and ulcers horrible to contem- 
plate. In this city alone there are said to be ten thousand pros- 
titutes — lost creatures, so lost that nature denies them offspring, 
to reproduce themselves, to form a link or have a place in the 
mighty processions of their kind, that stand out distinct and 
accursed, dead though alive. And yet each of these blasted 
ones was created with capacities of love, of affection, of receiv- 



MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 151 

ing and conferring happiness boundless and measureless. God 
made them pure and beautiful, and man has transformed them 
into beings so vile, that their very existence must not be recog- 
nized by the pure and virtuous! God created them but a 
little lower than the angels — man has perverted them into 
something scarcely better than devils ! 

What an awful perversion of the instincts of reproduction — 
of that great vital and fundamental law which animals obey 
without any violation of it, but which we, in our lofty nature 
and God-given powers, have thus transformed into such hideous 
shapes and worked into such sickening and diseased results ! 
The sexes are equal in numbers, and therefore nature designs 
that all men should marry — that one man should be united to 
)ne woman — that they should always be attracted to each 
other by the affections, and, in their love and companionship, 
their care for their offspring, for their home and its sweet 
enjoyments, it offers them rewards the purest, the most ex- 
alted, as well as the most rational, that our being is capable of 
feeling. And yet the sad spectacle is presented every day and 
all about us, that that which God designed should be the source 
of our greatest happiness is perverted into the most loathsome 
and most hideous of social miseries ! What maybe the causes 
or the principal causes (for there are doubtless many) of this 
hideous ulcer at the very heart of modern society, it is need- 
less to inquire — the actual or proximate cause is the perversion 
of the sexual laws — the violation of the instincts of reproduc- 
tion wholly unknown among animals and comparatively un- 
known among the subordinate races of mankind. It is the 
proud Caucasian — the large-brained and gloriously endowed 
Caucasian — who mostly exhibits this terrible crime against the 
higher law, and who thus awfully sins against God and his 
own nature. Such a thing as prostitution is unknown among 
negroes — among the aborigines of this continent, and scarcely 



152 MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 

perceptible u^iong Mongols or Chinese. There are, it is true, 
great vices, shocking indecencies and beastly practices among 
the Mongols and other subordinate races, but prostitution — the 
indiscriminate sale of the bodies as well as the desecration of 
the souls of women for money, as practiced openly in all the 
great centres of Christendom, is peculiar to the Caucasian 
alone — to that exalted and highly endowed race which God 
has so gifted and placed at the head of all other races of man- 
kind. 

Mulattoism is to the South what prostitution is to the North 
— that is, those depraved persons who give themselves up to a 
wicked perversion of the sexual instincts, resort to the mongrel 
or " colored women" instead of houses of ill-fame, as in the 
former case. Such a thing as love, or natural affection, never 
has nor can attract persons of different races, and therefore all 
the cohabitations of white men and negro women are abnor- 
mal — a perversion of the instincts of reproduction. This 
a original sin," as it may well be termed, carries with it, by in- 
evitable necesssity, certain consequences, and the declaration of 
Holy Writ, that the children are punished to the third and 
fourth generation for the sins of their fathers, is literally true in 
a physiological sense. The precise laws governing the genera- 
tion of mulattoism have been already stated, and need not be 
repeated in this place, but it may be well to remember that the 
offspring constantly diminishes when hybrids intermarry with 
hybrids of the same remove, until, reaching the fourth genera- 
tion, it loses all generative capacity as absolutely as the mule. 
With this radical and fundamental vice of organization, it will 
be readily seen that mongrelism can never become an important 
or dangerous element of population. Mr. Clay once advanced 
the opinion that the mixed blood of the South was rapidly in- 
creasing, and therefore a time would probably come when the 
negro blood would be absorbed by the whites, and the negro 



MULATTOISM AND MONGKELISM. 153 

life be utterly extinct. The ; gno ant abolition writers have made 
much of this opinion of Mr. Clay, but whatever the general 
intellectual superiority of that distinguished gentleman, any 
common sense person must know that his ignorance of the 
laws of organization renders his opinion on this subject of no 
value whatever. Two hundred or one hundred years ago, the 
proportion of the sexes among the white people was doubtless 
less equal than now, and therefore those abnormal cohabita- 
tions of white men with negro women were more frequent 
than at present. But after a certain amount or number of the 
mixed blood these cohabitations would take that direction, 
and, as at present, would be mainly confined to the hybrid and 
" colored" women. And in view of the fragility, sterility, and 
almost universal tendency to disease and disorganization in 
this mixed and mongrel element, it is seen at a glance how 
impossible it is that it should ever be of sufficient amount to 
threaten the safety or even to disturb the peace of Southern 
society. In proportion to the normal population or to the 
pure blood, it is doubtless less than it was fifty years ago, and 
it may even become less in the future, but it is wholly and abso- 
lutely impossible that it can ever exist in larger proportion than 
at present. 

This vicious intercourse with the mongrel women at the 
South, of course, has no resemblance or relation to amalgama- 
tion ; but it is ignorantly or wilfully thus confounded by the 
abolition writers of the day. Amalgamation is reciprocal 
union of the sexes, such as that between the Normans and 
the Anglo-Saxons in England — that occurs constantly between 
the natives of this country and those who have migrated here 
from Europe, and indeed as occurred in Mexico and other 
Spanish provinces, where the Spanish conquerors, who brought 
few Spanish females with them, sought wives among the 
natives or Indian races. The white blood of the South, like 



154 MTJLATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 

that of the North, is pure and untainted, and a white woman 
so lost and degraded as to mate with a negro, would not be 
permitted to even live among negroes in a Southern commu- 
nity. Occasionally a monstrous indecency of this kind does 
occur at the North, but they are usually English or other 
foreign-born persons, and unless there was some moral or 
physical cause — some disease of body or mind which rendered 
her incapable of self-guidance,, it can hardly be supposed that 
an American-born woman ever committed such an indecent 
outrage upon her own womanhood, and sin against God, as to 
mate with a negro. At the South, as has been said, such a thing 
is altogether impossible, for the woman would not alone be 
driven from the society of her own race, as at the North, but 
she would not be permitted (if known) to live even among ne- 
groes ! Amalgamation can never occur at the South, and 
scarcely needs an exposition in this place ; but as it is now ac- 
tually taking place in Jamaica and other islands, and, to a cer- 
tain extent in Cuba, and, moreover, such a monstrous social 
cataclysm is necessarily involved in the theory or idea of the 
abolition of " slavery," it is well enough, perhaps, to give it an 
explanation. 

There are about four millions of negroes in this country, and 
if, for the purposes of illustration, we may suppose the theory 
of anti-slavery ism to be finally reduced to practice, the follow- 
ing results must or would occur: — Four millions of whites 
would form marital unions with these negroes — the men tak- 
ing negresses to wife, and the females negroes for husbands, 
ending with the next generation, of course, in mulattoes and 
the extinction of negroes. The third generation would absorb 
the mulattoes and end in quadroons ; the fourth generation 
would manifest a corresponding diminution, and a time come 
when every atom of negro blood would disappear as utterly as 
if there had never been a negro on this continent. The popu> 



MTTLATTOISM AND MONGEELISM. 155 

lar notion would be, perhaps, like that of Mr. Clay, that 
amalgamation of the races would absorb the negro blood, it 
being the smaller element, and this would remain forever float- 
ing in the veins of posterity. But this could not be: it would 
die out, and in time become totally extinct. 

If, for example, one hundred of the leading and influential 
Abolitionists of the day should practically live out their own 
doctrines — should be placed on some island in the Pacific 
Ocean, each with a negress as wife, and utterly excluded from 
intercourse of any kind with the rest of mankind, they and 
their posterity would, after a certain time, utterly perish from 
existence. In the second generation whites and negroes alike 
would be extinct — that which the hand of the Eternal had 
fashioned, fixed, and designed for His glory and the happiness 
of His creatures would be blotched, deformed, and transformed 
by their own wickedness into mulattoes, and could no more 
exist beyond a given period than any other physical degenera- 
tion, no more than tumors, cancers, or other abnormal growths 
or physical disease can become permanent conditions. The 
fourth generation, as stated elsewhere, with diminished and 
diminishing vitality, would impart such feeble glimmerings of 
life, that their immediate progeny would be as absolutely 
limited in their powers of virility as mules, and the whole mass 
of disease and corruption would disappear from the earth, 
which God has forbidden it to desecrate any longer by its 
foul and disgusting presence.* But contemplating the subject 

° Royalism, or a Hereditary Aristocracy, or class that attempts to create a 
permanent superiority over the great body of the people by incestuous inter- 
marriage with its own members, is punished with similar results as those 
tint attend the violation of the sexual relations of different Races. And the 
idiotic, impotent, and diseased offspring of hereditary kings has always 
a certain physiological resemblance to the effete and sterile mulatto. Both 
are violations of the normal order, and both are limited to a determinate ex- 
istence, just as any other diseased conditions which naturo forbids to live. 



156 MTJLATTOISH AND MONGEELISM. 

in mass, or practical abolitionism, as it would work itself out 
among the millions, if we are permitted, for the purposes of 
illustration, to suppose such a monstrous and stupendous 
crime against God and our own being as the actual and prac- 
tical development of the theory, widely different results 
would naturally follow. As has been said, four millions of 
our own white race would be involved in this monstrous 
maelstrom of amalgamation with the subject race, while the 
remaining twenty millions would be left untouched and unpol- 
luted by the physical degradation that must needs follow such 
a stupendous sin as practical abolitionism. But they would 
not escape the moral deterioration, and the nation, weighed 
down by mulattoism, by such an ulcer on the body politic, by 
such a frightful mass of disease and death, would doubtless fall 
a conquest to some other nation or variety of the master race, 
and again become English provinces or dependencies of some 
other European power ! 

Nations are punished in this life, however it may be with in- 
dividuals, and a sin so enormous, a crime and impiety against 
God so awful, an outrage on their own nature so boundless 
and bottomless as practical abolitionism, or the actual living 
out of the abolition theory, would drag after it, as an inex- 
orable necessity, a corresponding punishment. 

History is pregnant with examples of this inevitable law. 
Nations after nations have risen, flourished, decayed, and died on 
the African continent ; millions upon millions of white Chris- 
tian men have existed in the valley of the Nile alone ; three 
hundred Christian bishops have met in convention on the site 
of ancient Carthage, when London was unknown and Rome 
itself the seat of the heathen Caesars ; and now, of the five 
hundred millions of Caucasians known to have existed on that 
continent since the Christian era began, there are probably 
not one million of typical white men left to tell the tale of their 



MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 157 

destruction, or to mourn over the desolation brought upon 
them by the crimes and sins of their progenitors. The vastly 
preponderating white element would doubtless save us from 
similar consequences, should we ever commit such a hideous 
crime as that involved in the practical application of the aboli- 
tion theory ; but, as has been said, we would most likely fall 
a conquest to some European power. But should this fate 
not overtake us, should we be left to struggle with the load 
of sin and disease thus brought upon ourselves by our crimes 
against reason and the ordinances of the Eternal, the nation 
would in time slongh off mulattoism, and finally recover from 
the foul and horrible contamination of admixture with the 
blood of the negro. The twenty millions of pure and untainted 
blood would increase so rapidly over the diseased portion, that 
finally every trace, atom, and drop or globule of the latter 
would be utterly extinct, and though the time for this process 
to work itself out, or for the white race to recover its healthy 
and natural condition, cannot be estimated with any certainty, 
such would needs be the final result. This same process, 
though the parties are directly reversed, is now in active oper- 
ation in Mexico, and all the Spanish-American States. The 
Spanish conquerors brought few countrywomen with them, 
and therefore sought wives among the natives or aboriginal 
race, and amalgamation became universal in all the Spanish 
provinces, the result of which has been the generation of a 
vast and wide-spread mongrelism. The Spanish dominion 
usually embodied in the pure blood, not from any prejudice 
against the mixed element, but from jealousy of the native 
born, preserved order and general prosperity. But the over- 
throw of this dominion brought the mongrel element into 
power, for though Iturbide, Santa Anna, Bravo, Bustamente, 
Parades, all or nearly all the chiefs of Independence were 
of pure Castilian blood, it was the mongrel element that oveiv 



158 MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 

threw the Spanish power and established the republic. Span- 
iards were constantly migrating to the American possessions 
of the Spanish crown, but, with the overthrow of the Spanish 
dominion, this supply of white blood was cut off, and instead 
of the generation of mongrelism, from that instant the repara- 
tory process began, which can only end in sloughing off the 
mixed blood, and the restoration of the aboriginal race to its 
natural and healthy condition, ?is it was before the Spanish 
conquest and the admixture of the white element. This 
mixed or mongrel element is found in the cities, but it is rap- 
idly declining. Mexico had, at the era of Independence, two 
hundred thousand inhabitants. It has now little over one 
hundred thousand people. Pueb.la, Perote, Jalapa, all the 
cities of Mexico decline in similar proportion, while the rural 
population — the pure, untainted, aboriginal element — though 
placed under great and striking disadvantages, holds its own, 
and were it guided and cared for, as it was one hundred years 
ago, would doubtless rapidly increase in number. Nor is it 
alone the fragility, feebleness, the vicious organization and im- 
perfect vitality of mulattoism, or of the mongrel element, that 
is thus rapidly diminishing the population in Mexican cities. 
The morale of mongrelism partakes of the physical deformity, 
and the vices of the mind are as striking and constant as the 
defects of the body. A creature with half the nature and 
wants of the white man united in the same existence with 
those of the Indian, is confronted with another, perhaps three- 
fourths white, while on the other side of him is one who has 
three-fourths Indian blood, and a population made up of such 
materials is necessarily and perpetually at war with itself. 
Hence in all the revolutions of Mexico there is no design, no 
common object that unite men in common purposes, no sense, 
reason, or common impulse whatever, except to destroy, to 
overturn, to seize power to-day without any purpose for to- 



MTJLATTOISM AND MONGEELISM, 159 

morrow. And this goes on, and must go on until nature re- 
pairs the outrages inflicted on her, until mongrelism dies out 
and the aboriginal or Indian element is restored to its pristine 
condition, until every atom of the white blood is extinct and 
the Indian race is again what it was at the time of the Spanish 
conquest. 

The subject opens up questions of mighty import to us, 
and possibly, as Mr. Calhoun believed, great dangers to our 
people and the future of civilization ; but if understood— if 
American legislators and statesmen comprehend the real char- 
acter of these vast populations south of us, known as the 
Spanish-American republics, and apply to them the true prin- 
ciples of social and political economy, when the time comes to 
deal with them, there need be little or no apprehension in re- 
gard to the results. Meanwhile, the solution of these problems 
is every day becoming simpler and more easily understood. 
The mixed blood is rapidly dying out ; a time must come when 
it will be wholly extinct, and then the white American will 
stand face to face with the native, a race which, whatever may 
be our experience of it in the North, is easily governed, and as 
has been said, if understood, there need be little or no appre- 
hension of danger or difficulty in regard to it. 

The same process is going on in Jamaica and other islands, 
though here it is the negro instead of the Indian that is in 
issue. An idea or assumption was set up in England that the 
negroes of these islands were black white men— men like them- 
selves, except in color — and therefore naturally entitled to the 
same rights ; and a party sprung up that at last induced the 
British Parliament to " abolish" the existing relations of the 
whites and negroes, and to place them on the same political 
and legal level. The white people protested against this 
wrong and outrage on reason and common sense, but it was 
of no avail. Their cry for mercy was unheard — at all events, 



160 MULATTOISM AND MONGRELI8M. 

disregarded— and the helpless and outraged whites are nc w in 
process of utter extinction by amalgamation. 

The same political and legal status leads, of course, to the 
same social level, and it, in turn, to the general admixture of 
blood. A white woman is not likely, even under these un- 
natural circumstances, to desecrate her womanhood by mating 
with a negro, though public sentiment forces her to associate 
with them. But this woman marries a man with one-eighth 
or one-fourth of negro blood, without hesitation, and the 
woman of this shade readily mates with a mulatto, and the 
latter with the 'typical negro. Thus, while natural instinct 
shrinks from such a crime against nature and such an impiety 
toward God as the marriage or mating of the pure types, 
the outward force of legal and political systems impels all 
shades of mongrelism in the direction of the preponderating 
element ; and a time must come when the white blood, becom- 
ing extinct, the negro will relapse, of course, into his native 
Africanism. 

The outward presence of a foreign government impels the 
unhappy white people of these fertile and beautiful islands into 
this monstrous violation of the laws of organization, and cer- 
tain ultimate social destruction ; but the power of the govern- 
ment also restrains the negro element from a rapid collapse 
into its native Africanism. In Hayti, where all external or 
governmental influence is withdrawn, the negro nature already 
strongly manifests its normal savagery, when no longer re- 
strained by the master race, and the worship of Obi or Fetieism, 
and even the native African dialect, is becoming common to 
many districts in that island. In general terms, it may be said 
that the exact moment when the white blood becomes extinct 
is also the instant when Africanism is perfectly restored, but 
the outward presence of the British government on the islands, 
and of the Colonization Society in Liberia, will prevent the com- 



MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 101 

plete development of this otherwise natural and necessary law. 
That the white blood of Jamaica must be absorbed, or rather 
must die out, is a necessity, an effect, a fate that is unavoid- 
able — the final end being alone a question of time. A foreign 
government, as has been said, regardless of the protests and 
the cry for mercy of its unfortunate people, forcibly changed 
their relations to the subordinate race. It declared the negroes 
the legal and political equals of the whites ; this necessarily led 
to social equality — that, in its turn, to the marriage of whites 
and quadroons — quadroons with mulattoes, and mulattoes with 
negroes ; thus the process, beginning with the act of the 
British Parliament abolishing " slavery," ends naturally and 
necessarily in the social immolation and final extinction of the 
white people of that island. 

All the links in the chain are continuous — all the series of 
events dependent on each other — all the steps of the process 
naturally united ; the emancipation, the legal equality, the 
social level, the admixture of blood, and the ultimate extinc- 
tion, are part and parcel of the same awful crime against nature 
and against God, against the laws of organization and against 
the decrees of the Eternal. The end, therefore, of these things 
must be the restoration of the pure Indian type on the main 
land and that of the negro in the islands ; and, as has been 
said, though the time needed for the completion of this repara- 
tory process — for such it is, physiologically considered — may 
not be determined with certainty, it can not be very distant, and 
were white men to stand aloof and permit the process to work 
itself out, without interference, it is quite probable that a hun- 
dred, or, at most, a hundred and fifty years hence, there would 
not be a drop of white blood found south of our own limits. 

Mulattoism is an abnormalism — a disease — a result that 
brings suffering unspeakable as well as extinction— that is un- 
avoidable ; and, in view of this fate brought upon them by a 



162 MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 

foreign government, who can doubt but that the total slaugh- 
ter of the white people of Jamaica would have been merciful, 
in comparison to that forced upon them by the abolition of 
" slavery," and equality with negroes ? Or will any one suf- 
ficiently informed on this subject, who understands the physical 
and moral suffering involved or inseparably linked with the 
mixed blood, doubt for a moment that, as a question of 
humanity, it would be vastly more humane to slaughter all the 
negroes in our midst, rather than apply to them the abolition 
theory, or rather than doom them to legal equality, to amalga- 
mation, to mulattoism, mongrelism, and that final unavoidable 
extinction that necessarily attends the minor element under 
these circumstances ? But in addition to the physical suffer- 
ing attending the process of extinction in Jamaica, it was, or 
is, or must be, the annihilation of Caucasian intelligence, of 
civilization, of ail that God has bestowed upon His creatures 
that is exalted and glorious, and therefore the crime perpetrated, 
however blindly or well-intentioned, must stand out in future 
ages the most awful and impious ever known in human annals. 
Such is a brief outline of the physiological laws governing 
mulattoism and mongrelism — that abnormal or diseased condi- 
tion which results from admixture of the blood of separate 
races or species of men. Its mental and moral features are 
equally distinct and discordant, though less susceptible of ex- 
planation or of being classified, as in the case of the merely 
physical qualities. As a general principle the mongrel has 
intellectual ability in proportion as he approximates to the su- 
perior race. This is a necessary truth ; there is mental capacity 
or intelligence, latent or actual, in exact proportion to the size 
of the brain, in animals, indeed, as well as human beings, as cer- 
tainly and invariably as there is muscular power in proportion 
to the size and form of the muscles ; but this principle is hardly 
a guide or test in respect to the moral qualities of the mixed 



MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM. 163 

blood. There is scarcely anything or any phase of the general 
subject that has so blinded and led astray u anti-slavery" writers 
as this subject of mulattoism ; for they were not only ignorant 
of it, but never dreamed for a moment that there was any such 
thing in existence, and constantly assumed in their reasonings 
(?) that the mulatto was a negro, and therefore presented him, 
and even the quadroon, as an evidence of the mental capacity 
of that race. One of these people would find his way to Eng- 
land or the North, was educated, became an editor, physician, 
priest, sometimes even an author, on a small scale perhaps, at 
all events a public lecturer, to whom white men and women 
listened with the utmost gravity, and perfectly satisfied them- 
selves of the mental equality of the races, for here was a negro 
who talked the same language, had the same ideas, and was 
quite as eloquent as the general average among white men. 
Even the Abbe Gregoire labored under this very absurd and 
very general misconception, and wrote a book giving the biog- 
raphy of fifteen negroes to prove the mental equality of the 
races, not one of whom was a negro at all ! Some mules are 
doubtless superior to some horses, but no mule was ever equal 
to the average horse ; and doubtless some mulattoes have been 
superior to some white men, but no mulatto ever did nor ever 
can reach the intellectual standard of the Caucasian. What 
nonsense it would be to point out a favorite mule to show that 
asses were the equals of horses ; yet this nonsense, or similar 
nonsense, is practised every day by those who rely upon 
mongrels and hybrids to prove the mental capacity of the 
negro ! Indeed, quadroons, and even mongrels, with only 
one-eighth of negro blood, like Roberts, the President of Libe- 
ria, have been quoted as illustrations of negro character and 
accepted as perfectly satisfactory by the blind followers of 
the equally blind teachers of Abolitionism. The fact that 
such a thing as an " educated" mulatto exists at all among us, 



164 MULATTOISM AND MONGEELISM. 

as long as we have uneducated white men, is a disgrace to the 
nation, to our institutions, to our social development ; and in 
England it serves as a test of social wrong and wickedness 
frightful to contemplate. As has been said, no mule was ever 
equal to the average horse, so no mulatto was ever created 
equal to the standard white man ; yet in England there are 
eight millions unable to read or write, and through human in- 
stitutions rendered inferior to the " educated" mulatto ! The 
moral qualities of the mixed element are less definite, but every 
one's observations, as well as history and statistics, tend to the 
same general conclusion — the greater viciousness of the mu- 
latto when compared with either of the original types or typi- 
cal races. This essential truth, common to all exceptional and 
abnormal conditions, is universally manifested amou^ " slaves" 
at the South, " free" negroes at the North, mestizoes in Mexico, 
or the whilom hybrids of Hayti. The mongrels of Mexico — 
the so-called Leperos — are thieves, ladrones, robbers, and assas- 
sins, not like the Italian bravos of a former age, who, to a cer- 
tain extent, redeemed their horrible crimes by a kind of chival- 
rous daring which gave their victims some chance for life, but 
secret, crouching, and cowardly assassins, who never attack 
where there is the slightest danger to themselves. They 
crouch, concealed in the shadow of a wall or door-way, en- 
veloped in huge cloaks, with the exception of the arm that 
wields the keen, narrow-bladed, and double-edged knife, which 
is plunged in the back of the hapless victim, and then they 
invariably run away, unless supported by their vile compan- 
ions. In the field they never face white men except when 
their numbers are overwhelming, and they give no quarter; 
but if themselves defeated, their cry for mercy is so intolerable 
in its groveling clamor, that the victor is disposed to dispatch 
them at once to get rid of it. With diminished vitality, and 
less hold on existence than the pure blood, the mongrel, while 



MTJLATTOISM AND MONGKELISM. 165 

utterly reckless of life in respect to others, clings to it himself 
and shrinks from death with an abject terror rarely or never 
witnessed in the original races. The typical negro, for exam- 
ple, though brave enough when led by his master, shrinks iu 
terror from the face of the lordly Caucasian when not thus 
supported, and a score or two of the latter in the open field 
would doubtless drive a thousand negroes before them like 
sheep to the slaughter. But a negro condemned to die, to be 
hanged, to be burned even, rarely manifests dread or apprehen- 
sion of any kind. His imperfect innervation, his sluggish 
brain, and low grade of sensibility, render him incapable of 
anticipating that terrible physical suffering from which the 
elaborate and exquisitely organized Caucasian suffers under 
these circumstances. So, too, the Indian — " the stoic of the 
woods — the man without a tear," as the poet Campbell, and 
others ignorant of his nature, have represented him — a crea- 
ture, according to their absurd fancies, fashioned on the Ro- 
man model, with the self-poised and philosophical indifference 
to outward things of a Seneca, and the calm contempt of phys- 
ical suffering of a Cato, but who, all this time, in his grosser 
organization, has none of the white man's perceptions of phys- 
ical pain, and therefore sings his death-song in total unconscious- 
ness of that which to us is the extreme, or supposed extreme, 
of physical suffering. 

This organic insensibility of the lower races to physical pain, 
Avhich renders them indifferent to the approach of death, is 
sometimes equalled, and perhaps surpassed, as regards the out- 
ward expression, by the dominating n oral forces in the case 
of the higher organized Caucasian. Lamartine has said that 
the mistress of Louis XV., the notorious Duchess Du Barry, 
was the only person sent to the guillotine during the reign of 
terror that asked for mercy, or- shrank with terror from the 
approach of death. Not men alone, but women, even del- 



166 MTJLATTOISM AND MON6EELISM. 

icately nurtured young girls, who, under ordinary circumstan- 
ces, would faint on witnessing the death of a sparrow, ascended 
the steps of the guillotine without a tear or the quiver of a 
muscle. They died for an idea, and a false one at that, but 
they believed it true and immutable as heaven itself, and the 
exaltation of the mind over the body, the dominating moral 
forces over the laws of the physical being, enabled them to meet 
.death without a murmur, and, as regards the outward expres- 
sion, to seem as indifferent to the physical pain involved, as the 
Indian or the negro, whose lower organization is incapable of 
such suffering. 

But the mulatto or mongrel has neither the physical insen- 
sibility of the inferior nor the moral force of the superior race, 
and the instinctive consciousness of his feeble vitality renders 
him the most cowardly of human beings. The generals and 
leaders of the mixed blood in Spanish-America, as well as those 
of Hayti, have been as much distinguished for their monstrous 
vices, their treachery, cowardice, sensuality, and ferocity, as 
for any special ability they may have displayed. The cruel 
and despotic government of Spain, when desirous to crush the 
revolutionists, invariably trusted the bloody work to mongrel 
chiefs, who just as invariably exceeded their orders, and 
when directed to decimate a town or village, often massacred 
the entire population. 

The mongrel generals of Hayti were even more ferocious 
and bloody, if not surpassing in treachery and cowardice the 
Indian mongrels of the Continent. Rigaud, the most dis- 
tinguished of the Haytien chiefs, was also the most repulsive 
in his enormous and beastly vices. Christophe and Dessa- 
lines were negroes, and they simply acted out the negro in- 
stinct under those unnatural circumstances. They remorse- 
lessly slaughtered all the white men, women, and children 
of the island that they could find, for when the negro rises 



MTJLATTOISM AND MONGEELISM. 167 

against his master, it is not to conquer but to exterminate the 
dreaded race ; and the helpless infant or its frightened and des- 
pairing mother touches no chord of mercy in the souls of these 
frantic and terror-stricken wretches when forced or betrayed 
into resistance to their masters. But the mongrel leaders, and 
especially Rigaud, were mere moral monsters, whose deeds 
of slaughter were alternated with scenes of beastly debauchery 
and unnatural and devilish revelry, such as could neither orig- 
inate in the simple animalism of the negro nor with the most 
sensual, jJerverse, and fiendish among white men. 

But we have this viciousness of the mongrel displayed con- 
tinually before us at the North as well as at the South. Nine- 
tenths of the crime committed by so-called negroes is the work 
of the mongrel — the females almost all being as lewd and 
lascivious as the males are idle, sensual, and dishonest. The 
strange and disgusting delusion that has fastened itself on so 
many minds at the North seeks to cast an air of romance over 
these mongrel women — these "girls almost white" — and in 
negro novels and on the stage represent them as " victims of 
caste," and often doomed to a fate worse than death to gratify 
the " vices of the whites." And a diseased sentimentality, as in- 
decent as it is nonsensical, is indulged by certain "pious ladies" 
in respect to these "interesting" quadroons, etc., who are 
almost always essentially vicious, while their own white sisters 
falling every hour from the ranks of pure womanhood, are un- 
heeded, and their terrible miseries totally disregarded. 

Finally, it scarcely need be repeated that mongrelism is a 
diseased condition — a penalty that nature imposes for the vio- 
lation of her laws — a punishment that, by an inexorable neces- 
sity, is inflicted on the offspring of those who, in total disregard 
of her ordinances, of instinct, of natural affection, and of reason, 
form sexual interunions with j:>ersons of different races, but 
which, like all other abnormal conditions, is confined within 
fixed limits and mercifully doomed to final extinction. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE "SLAVE TRADE/' OR THE IMPORTATION OF NEGROES. 

In the preceding chapters of this work it has been shown 
that the human family, like all other forms of being, is com- 
posed of a certain number of species, all having a general 
resemblance, but each specifically different from the other- - 
that the Caucasian and Negro are placed by the will of the Al- 
mighty Creator at the two extremes of humanity — the former 
being the most superior and the latter the most inferior of all 
the known human races ; that the physical structure or organi- 
zation is always and necessarily connected with corresponding 
faculties or functions, and therefore the more prominent physi- 
cal qualities of the negro have been presented, in order to illus- 
trate his mental and moral nature. It has also been shown 
that the all-powerful instinct (prejudice) which revolts at the 
commingling of the blood of different races (stronger even with 
the negro than our own race) springs from a fundamental 
organic necessity, impelling us to preserve our structural in- 
tegrity, and if disregarded and violated, it carries with it a 
corresponding penalty, and the miserable progeny, like all 
other abnormal conditions, is limited to a determinate exist- 
ence ; that that which the Eternal hand has moulded and fash- 
ioned is also eternal, and beyond the power, caprice, ignorance, 
or wickedness of His creatures, to change or modify ; and 
therefore all the departures from the typical standard — all 
forms and degrees of the mongrel or mixed blood — are doomed 
to final extinction. Here we have, then, four millions of a 



"the slave trade." 169 

widely different race in our midst, and though we of the pres- 
ent generation may not be responsible for their presence among 
us, and are only called upon to deal with the fact itself, with- 
out regard to its origin, the subject is of profound interest, and 
however current or unanimous the opinion may now be against 
the original " slave trade," it is believed that a larger knowl- 
edge and a more extended acquaintance with the facts em- 
braced in that subject will finally result in a total change of 
popular (American) opinion. And what American will not 
rejoice at such a result, if, when all the facts are known and 
tested by reason and conscience and the dictates of a true 
humanity, it is found that, however censurable the means em- 
ployed may sometimes have been, the " slave trade," the origi- 
nal importation of African negroes by our ancestors, was 
right? The negro, as has been shown, from the necessities of 
his organism — the size and form of his brain — is, perforce, 
when isolated and by himself, a savage — an idle, non-advanc- 
ing, and non-producing savage, and history, ancient and mod- 
ern, in a word, all human experience, confirms this physiological 
and material fact. African travelers, finding occasionally the 
debris of Caucasian populations and the remains of Mahometan 
civilization, have told fanciful tales about negro industry, 
thrift, and morality, while dreamers at home have indulged in 
even more absurd fancies still in regard to the future of Africa. 
But why go to Africa to theorize about the negro, when we 
have him here, and subject to our senses as well as our reason? 
Why speculate on impossible assumptions, when the negro 
brain may be seen any day at a medical college, and its 
incapacity — its organic and inherent incapacity — to be any 
thing else, or to ever manifest any thing else, but just that 
which all human experience confirms and assures us must be, 
as it always has been, the destiny of this race, when left to 
itself? To talk of the civilization of the negro of Africa is like 

8 



170 "the slave trade. 

talking of the change of color of the negro, for it involves the 
same absurdities, the same impossibilities ; and were not those 
who indulge in it utterly ignorant of the subject, one might 
say the same impieties, for the assumption that they can change 
the intellectual nature which God has given the negro, is as 
grossly impious as if they were to undertake his physical re- 
creation. 

The negro, therefore, isolated in Africa, as has been said, 
must be in the future what he has been in the past, and with- 
out a supernatural interposition, must remain forever a simple, 
non-producing, and non-advancing savage. Can this have been 
the design of the Almighty? There are some things we are 
not permitted to know, that it is impious as well as foolish to 
seek to know, that the Almighty, in His infinite beneficence as 
well as wisdom forbids us to inquire into, or rather to attempt 
to inquire into ; but in all that is necessary to our happiness and 
for the well-being of the innumerable creatures that surround 
us, we may know, indirectly, it is true, but none the less cer- 
tainly, the design of the Almighty Creator. 

All things are obviously designed for use — all the innumer- 
able hosts of living creatures for specific purposes ; the natures 
of many are known to us now ; every day is adding to our 
knowledge, and a time will assuredly come when the nature 
and purposes of the most ferocious of wild animals and the 
most venomous of serpents will be clearly understood and ap- 
plied to their proper uses. It is, therefore, the obvious design 
of the Creator that the negro should be useful, should labor, 
should be a producer, and as his organism forbids this, if left 
to himself, it is evidently intended that he should be in juxta- 
position with the superior Caucasian. It is equally obvious 
that the tropical latitudes endowed with such exuberant fer- 
tility were designed for cultivation, for use, for the growth and 
production of those indigenous products foimd nowhere else ex- 



171 

cept within the tropics and tropicoid regions of the earth. The 
organization of the Caucasian utterly forbids physical labor 
under a tropical sun. He may live there, enjoy life, longevity, 
the full and healthy spring of all his faculties, without lassitude 
or any of that weight upon his energies which ill-informed per- 
sons have supposed followed a residence in these climes, but 
he can not cultivate the earth or grow the products of the 
soil by his own labor. The negro organism, on the contrary, 
is adapted to this production, and the rays of a vertical sun 
stimulate and quicken his energies, instead of prostrating 
them, as in the case of the former. In another place this sub- 
ject will be fully discussed, and therefore it will be sufficient in 
this place to simply state the fact, that the labor of the negro 
can alone grow the indigenous products of the tropics, and 
without this labor the great tropical centre of the American 
continent must consequently remain a barren waste. 

The introduction of negroes into the Spanish islands of the 
"West Indies can, therefore, hardly be called an accident. 
Xegro servants were introduced into Spain by the Arabian and 
Moorish conquerors. From time immemorial negro k * slaves" 
were the favorite household servants of the oriental Caucasians 
— not alone because they were the most docile and submi->ive 
of human beings, but because they were the most faithful and 
absolutely incapable of betraying their masters, and scarcely a 
Moorish family of consideration entered Spain without being 
accompanied by some of these trusty and favorite servants. The 
recent Portuguese discoveries and conquests on the African 
coasts had also brought many negroes into the Peninsula, and 
when Columbus and the Spaniards began their settlements in the 
Xew World, there were negroes to be found in almost every 
town in Spain. The conquest of the miserable natives of His- 
paniola and Cuba, and their partition among the Spanish adven- 
turers, failed to gratify their fierce desire for wealth, and from 



172 "THE SLAV 

the brutality of their masters, the still lurking desire of these 
poor creatures for their former condition, or, it may have been, 
as declared by the Spanish writers, their original feebleness 
of constitution, they rapidly faded away in the mines and on 
the plantations, and more vigorous laborers became an abso- 
lute necessity, if cultivation, progress, and civilization were to 
be carried on in these islands. It was thus a material and in- 
dustrial necessity, rather than any fancied humanity on tfie 
part of Las Casas and his friends in behalf of the Indians, that 
carried negroes into the Spanish islands. Some accompanied 
the earliest adventurers ; they were seen to be safe, and to re- 
main perfectly healthy when Spaniards themselves were con- 
stantly smitten down by the fierce suns and deadly malaria of 
the tropics, while instead of the drooping and listless air that 
distinguished the natives, these negroes were the most joyous 
and contented of human beings. 

The interests of civilization and of a true humanity were, 
therefore, united with the humane desires of Las Casas and his 
friends in respect to the natives, and negroes soon became the 
sole reliance of the planters and others to whom lands had been 
assigned by the Spanish princes. Modern writers — Helps, 
Prescott, and others — laboring under the world-wide miscon- 
ceptions of our times in regard to negroes, have expressed aston- 
ishment at the (to them) strange inconsistency of Las Casas, who, 
laboring so earnestly in behalf of the Indians, quite unconsciously 
aided in substituting the negro, and thus, as they suppose, laid 
the foundation or led the way to the enslavement of one race, 
while working for the freedom of another. But neither Las 
Casas, nor any one else, had any notion of freedom or slavery 
in connection with these negroes. Such a thing as a free negro 
was doubtless unknown in Spain or anywhere else, or, if known, 
it was simply because he had lost or strayed from his master. 
History does not, it is true, cast much light on the subject, but 



THE SLATE TBADE." 



178 



it ,s cerfaun that neither Las Casas nor any of his cotempora- 
nes had any conception of negro freedom, or associated with 
that race any other condition or social statns than that which 
modern writers have universally designated as negro slavery 

Nor was he laboring for the freedom of the Indians, as that 
term is now understood. Many, perhaps most of those who 
defended the natives from the oppressions of the Spaniards 
were prompted solely by religious zeal. These poor « heath 
ens," they held, were entitled, not to freedom, to political or 
socml nghte of any kind, but to the rights of religion, to par- 
t.cpate m the Holy Sacraments, to enjoy the privileges which 
the Church promised to all who would accept them, and as the 
ferocity of the Spaniards constantly interfered with this hunted 
them down and slaughtered them without mercy, or rapidly 
.destroyed them by hard labor and the excessive burthens 
heaped upon them when they no longer resisted their invaders, 
the priests generally, and many others, sought to defend 
them. 

Las Casas, who seems to have been a generous and noble- 
hearted man, devoted himself for many years, indeed a whole 
life-fame, to the cause of the natives, but at no time or in any 
way was he laboring for their freedom or to secure to them 
social or political rights of any kind. Other priests labored to 
secure their spiritual welfare, or what they believed to be this 
whde Las Casas, though a profoundly religious man, sought 
their material preservation, and to save them from that direful 
late of total extinction which even then was threatened, and 
which finally has been so complete, that at this moment there 
is not one single descendant of these people left to tell the tale 
of their destruction. The popular notion, therefore, that Las 
Casas was the author or originator of the "slave trade " and 
of American (negro) "slavery," in order to "free" the native 
race, is altogether groundless. 



174 

It originated, as has been stated, in an industrial necessity— 
and while he assented to it, with the humane belief, doubtless, 
that it would tend to benefit the native race in relieving it 
from the excessive and fatal burthens imposed by the Span- 
iards, his assent or dissent could have no influence whatever 
on the subject. And as he was not laboring for the freedom 
of the natives — for nothing whatever but their mere material 
preservation — of course he could have no doubts or anxieties ^n 
regard to negroes in that respect, and when he saw them re- 
sisting alike the deadly malaria of the climate and the brutality 
of their masters, and contented and happy, he doubtless felt 
that it was a wise and beneficent arrangement of Providence 
that had thus adapted them to their condition and to the fulfil- 
ment of the great purposes of civilization and human progress. 

The supply of negro labor in San Domingo, Cuba, and other 
islands, was followed, however, by extensive importations for 
the main land, and finally the trade, falling into the hands of 
the Dutch and English, became a world-wide commerce, and 
negroes were taken into every nook and corner of the New 
World where there were found buyers, or where the traders 
could dispose of their human cargoes. And here begins the 
wrong side of the matter — the cruelties, injustice, outrages, and 
inhumanities which, together with the false theories, morbid 
philanthropy, and a certain amount of falsehood, have made the 
term " slave trade" synonymous with everything that is di- 
abolical and devilish that the imagination can conceive of. 
The Spanish government of the day limited the introduction 
of negroes, and provided for an equal number of females, and 
encouraged the importation of children ; indeed, while there is 
no reason to suppose that they ever contemplated the negro as 
abstractly entitled to the rights claimed for them in our times, 
it is certain that both the governments of Charles V. and 
Philip II. did regard them as human, and made every provi- 



"the slave trade." 175 

sion that was proper for their kind and humane treatment, both 
in regard to their passage from Africa and their treatment on 
the plantations. But when the physical adaptation of the 
negro had become so clearly demonstrated in the Spanish 
islands, the British and Dutch merchants began to import them 
in such multitudes, and the prices fell so low, that it would 
not pay to import women and children, and then began that 
nameless and unspeakable outrage, not merely on human but 
on animal nature, which has distinguished this trade ever since, 
and, to the disgrace of all Christendom, which at this moment 
distinguishes it io the neighboring island of Cuba — the sepa- 
ration of the sexes and the violation of the rights of reproduc- 
tion. Instead of a simple supply of negro labor essential to 
tropical production, and which violated no instinct, want, or 
necessity of the negro nature, ships were now fitted out on 
speculation; cargoes of men, as mere work-animals, were 
obtained in Africa and carried to any port where there was a 
chance of a market, not in the tropics alone, but all over North 
America ; and the British Provinces of New England, as well 
as Cuba and Porto Rico, became the marts for traffic in human 
beings. This accounts for the great mortality of these people 
in the islands. In general terms, it may be said the negro will 
work no more than he ought to work ; that is, nature has so 
adapted him that he can not be forced in this respect ; but 
when they could be purchased so cheaply, the master had lit- 
tle interest in their health, and together with the very small 
native increase going on, the mortality vastly preponderated. 
The New England as well as the Middle States were fully sup- 
plied with these cheap negroes, but they never were profitable, 
and the laws of industrial adaptation has steadily carried 
their descendants southward. 

The " slave trade," after the first fifty years of its com- 
mencement, up to the American Revolution, may be said to 



176 "THE SLAVE TRADE." 

have been in the hands of the British mainly, of the merchants 
of Bristol and Liverpool. These traders, as has been said, 
made it a mere matter of commerce, dealing in it just as they 
did in any other article of commerce, and many of the largest 
fortunes in England are believed to have had their foundations 
laid in this traffic. So far as the colonists participated in it, 
they approached somewhat to the earliest Spaniards, and 
though there were more males imported than there were fe- 
males, the horrible practice of the islands, which forbade these 
people to fulfill the command of the Almighty, and multiply 
their kind, did not prevail to any considerable extent. Nature 
always recovers from the outrages committed on her laws, and 
though no legislation or human means has sought to remedy 
the disproportions of the sexes, they are now probably equal, 
though of the imported progenitors of our negroes probably 
two-thirds at least were males, and though even a larger pro- 
portion than this were imported into Northern ports, there 
are now scarcely a quarter of a million in the Northern States, 
while the descendants of those imported into the North have 
expanded into four millions at the South ! What a lesson 
these facts present to the blind and infatuated " friends of free- 
dom" in Kansas, and the equally blind believers in the ordi- 
nance of 1787. The negro, by a higher law than human enact- 
ments, goes where he is needed, and permanently no Avhere 
else. A broad and liberal survey of the whole ground — the 
nature of the negro, his utter uselessness w T hen isolated or sep- 
arated from the white man — his organic adaptation to tropical 
production — the wonderful fertility of tropical soils — the vast 
importance of their peculiar products to civilization and human 
well-being — demonstrates, beyond doupt the right and justice 
of the original " slave trade," or the original importation of 
African negroes into America. The abuses that finally attended 
it have been made to overshadow the thing itself, in the popular 



"the slave trade." 177 

estimation, but despite all these, and all other drawbacks, it is 
certain that the introduction of these negroes has resulted in 
a vastly preponderating good to our race, while the four mil- 
lions of Christianized and enlightened negroes in our midst, 
when compared with any similar number of their race in Africa, 
are in a condition so immeasurably happy and desirable, that 
we can find no terms that will sufficiently express it. 

The frightful tales invented of their cruel treatment on the 
passage from Africa may. be dismissed with the single remark 
that it was the highest interest of the traders to take the utmost 
care of them, and if that ^be not sufficient, with the simple but 
pregnant fact that the average mortality, when the trade was 
legal, was only eleven per cent., while the illegal trade, the 
efforts to put it down, the false philanthropy, and mistaken 
interference, have raised the mortality to something like forty 
per cent. ! 

There were but two mistakes, wrongs, inhumanities, outrages 
on nature, whatever we may term them, involved in the 
" slave trade," so far as we were concerned: 1st, the importa- 
tion mainly of males, and the consequent violation of the laws 
of reproduction — of that fundamental and universal command 
of the Almighty to multiply their kind and to replenish the 
earth ; and, 2d, their importation into northern latitudes, un- 
suited to the physical and industrial nature of the negro. But, 
as has been said, nature, sooner or later, recovers from every 
outrage upon her laws, and while we, in our ignorance and 
folly, have been disputing over our petty theories in respect to 
this subject, her reparatory processes have silently and steadily 
gone on and corrected our mistakes, and, therefore, both of the 
real wrongs connected with the " slave trade" are now sub- 
stantially righted. 

It is, however, discreditable to our intelligence that the 
statute book of the nation is disfigured by our laws and legis- 

8* 



178 

lation on this subject. England has waged a war upon the 
distinctions of nature and the natural relations of races, ever 
since we threw off her dominion, and set up a new system of 
government founded on the fixed and unchangeable laws of 
nature. The preservation of her own system — the rule of 
classes and of artificial distinctions among men of the same 
race — impels her by a blind instinct quite as much, perhaps, as 
reason, to pursue this policy, and therefore, under the pretense 
of putting down the " slave trade,' 1 she has constantly labored 
to obliterate the distinctions of race, and force or corrupt the 
white men of America into affiliation and equality with negroes. 
The war upon the "slave trade" was simply the means for 
accomplishing her ends — the equalization of races in the New 
World, and in Canada, the West Indies, in all her American 
possessions, she has succeeded. Negroes, whites, Indians, and 
mongrels are all alike her subjects, and the distinctions of so- 
ciety, as in Europe, are wholly artificial, while those of race, 
of nature, that are fixed by the hand of the Eternal, are impi- 
ously disregarded. And we have been her tools, her miserable 
dupes, and ourselves labored for our own degradation, to ac- 
complish her objects and obliterate the distinctions of races. 
The question of importing more negroes — to keep open or to 
prohibit the " slave trade" — was and is a question of expedi- 
ency, that our government should decide for itself, without 
regard to the opinions or policy of any other people. But to 
blindly follow England in her nefarious and impious efforts to 
break down the distinctions of race, to pronounce the conduct 
of our own ancestors infamous and worthy of death because 
English opinion and monarchical influences and exigencies de- 
mand it, is a disgrace to the manhood of our people and the 
intelligence of our statesmen that should not be permitted to 
disgrace our government any longer ; and it is to be hoped 
that the time is not distant when this disgraceful legislation 
will be swept from our statute book. v 



CH APT ER, XV. 

NATURAL RELATIONS AND NORMAL CONDITION OF THE 
NEGRO. ' 

There are now between four and five millions of negroes in 
the United States. They or their descendants must remain 
forever — for good or evil — an element of our population. 
What are their natural relations to the whites ? — what their 
normal condition ? 

The Almighty has obviously designed all His creatures — 
animal as well as human — for wise, beneficent, and useful pur- 
poses. In our ignorance of the animal world, we have only 
domesticated or applied to useful purposes a very small num- 
ber, the horse, the ox, ass, dog, etc. ; but these we practically 
understand, so that even the most ignorant will not abuse 
them or violate their instincts. The most ignorant farmer or 
laborer would never attempt to force the dog to perform the 
domestic role of the cat, or the ox that of the horse, or the 
sheep that of the ass, etc. He knows the natures of these ani- 
mals — their relations to himself and to each other, and governs 
them accordingly. 

The natural relations of parent and offspring, of brothers 
and sisters, of husbands and wives, are also measurably under- 
stood by the most ignorant, for natural instinct quite as much. 
as reason guides us in these things. The father knows that 
the child should obey him, and the latter feels instinctively 
that this obedience is a sacred duty. The same instinct prompts 
the brother to love his sister, and it may be said that all the 
relations of consanguinity, and the duties that spring from 



180 NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

them, are regulated more by instinct than by reason. There 
are innumerable books written on this subject, to teach the 
duties of parents and offspring, husbands and wives, etc., but 
with a proper cultivation of the intellect and of the affections, 
just perceptions of the duties involved follow intuitively. 

Passing beyond these domestic and family relations — the 
relations of individuals — of one man to another, and to the 
State or general citizenship, areless understood, for here nature 
must be led by reason, and though there are certain great and 
fixed facts that serve as landmarks for our guidance, we must 
mainly rely upon our reason. 

It is true, Christianity indicated these relations two thousand 
years ago ; nevertheless, they are almost totally disregarded 
in the Old World ; but though too often misunderstood and 
misapplied among ourselves, they are sufficiently comprehended 
to constitute the foundation of our social order. 

Another advance, and we arrive at the relations of races — 
of white men and negroes — and of other races that may chance 
to be in juxtaposition, and of which the whole world may be 
said to be profoundly ignorant in theory, while one-half of our 
people have justly and truly solved them in practice. The 
social order of the South — the social and Wal Mat us of the 
negro — reposes on the natural relations of the white and black 
races, and, as has been observed, while the world is ignorant 
of these relations, the people of the South, indeed it may be 
said the American people, have practically solved them, and to 
the mutual benefit of all concerned. But before we can enter 
on a discussion of the natural relations and social adaptations 
of races, Ave must first clearly understand the relations that we 
bear to each other as individuals, and to the State or aggre- 
gate of individuals. 

All the individuals of a species, whether animal or human, 
of course have the same faculties, the same wants, in a word, 



NORMAL CONDITION OP THE NEGRO. 181 

the same specialties. Occasionally chance — some accident, re- 
mote or immediate — deforms or blights individuals ; they may 
be idiotic, insane, or otherwise incapable, but these are excep- 
tional cases that do not disturb the great, fixed, and, unchange- 
able equality, sameness, or uniformity of the race. The white 
or Caucasian race, as has been observed, varies much more 
than any other race. There are tall men and short men, giants 
and pigmies, blondes and brunettes, red-haired and black- 
haired, but the nature remains the same ; and if they were all 
placed under the same circumstances of climate, government, 
religion, etc., all would exhibit the same moral characteris- 
tics, and, to a certain extent, the same physical appearances. 
This is sufficiently illustrated among ourselves every day. 
Almost universally our people have sprung from the " lower 
classes" of European society. The coarse skin, big hands and 
feet, the broad teeth, pug nose, etc., of the Irish and German 
laborer pass away in a generation or two, and their American 
offspring have more delicate and classical features than even 
the most favored and privileged European aristocracy. Hav- 
ing the same faculties, the same wants, etc., it is a self-evident 
truth that they are entitled to the same rights, the same oppor- 
tunities, to live out the nature with which God has endowed 
them. The Divine Author of Christianity promulgated this 
vital truth with great impressiveness. He selected his dis- 
ciples from the lowest and most oppressed classes of the people, 
and thundered his most terrible denunciations in the ears of 
the sacerdotal aristocracy. The great body of the Jewish 
people were mere beasts of burden to their brethren — the 
priestly oligarchy — which governed the State and lived in idle 
luxury on the toil, ignorance, superstition, and misery of the 
people. On all occasions these oppressors were denounced, 
and the great and everlasting truth that God w T as no respecter 
of persons, and all men equally precious in His sight — even 



182 NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

the beggar Lazarus and the repent ent Magdalen* — were the 
daily teachings of Christ. And there ran be no doubt thai 
the persecution and final crucifixion of* the Author of the 
Christian religion was intended, by the rulers of the Jews, to 
crush out the great doctrine of equality, and thus to preserve 
their ascendency over the minds and fortunes of the people. 
The Divine ordinance — to " do unto others as we would have 
them do unto as" — is a complete exposition of our natural re- 
lations to each other, and an indestructible rule of nature as 
well as a religious obligation. All men — that is, all who be- 
long to the race or species — having the same nature and 
designed by the Creator for the same purposes, the same rights 
and the same duties, it is an obvious inference thai all human 
governments should rest on this great fundamental truth. 
No man should be permitted, indeed no man should be base 

enough to claim privileges denied to his fellow, or to any class 
of his fellows, ami the same great principle which Christ 
ordained should guide Hi- followers in their personal relations, 
should be the only legitimate rule in their political relations. 
To do unto others as we would have them do to us — to recog- 
nize in all other men the rights we claim for ourselves — to 
admit those reciprocal obligations which, in truth, spring from 
the necessities of our being — in short, to demand equal rights 
for ourselves, and to admit the same lights on the part of our 
fellows, seems so obvious, so instinctive, so just, and indeed 
self-evident, that an intelligent and just mind wonders how it 
ever could be otherwise, or that systems of government can 
exist in our own enlightened times in utter contradiction to 
such simple and self-evident truths. Government, the State, 
the aggregate citizenship, based on the great fundamental 
truth of equality, becomes a simple, beneficent, and easily un- 
derstood institution. It leaves all men where God and nature 
places them, in natural relation to each other. Its functions, 



NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 183 

however complicated the details, are simply protective, leaving 
individuals to ascend or descend in the social scale, just as 
their industry, cultivation, and moral worth may be apprecia- 
ted by their fellow-citizens. It protects one man from the 
violence or injustice of another, and the aggregate citizenship 
or nation from foreign aggression. 

It is a misnomer to speak of government conferring rights; 
it may (or the thing called government in other lands may) 
take away, suppress, or withhold rights; but rights, as declared 
by Mr. Jefferson, are inherent and in fact inseparable from in- 
dividual existence. God has endowed every man with the 
capacity of self-government, and imposed this self-government 
as a duty as well as a right. He has given him certain wants 
instincts, desires, etc., and endowed him with reason to gov- 
ern and guide these things. As a citizen, he of course does 
not, or can not surrender any of his natural rights or control 
over himself. The State protects him from wrong or injus- 
tice, but himself a portion of the citizenship, he still governs 
himself. It is a contradiction to suppose that one man can 
govern another better than he can govern himself — that is, 
under the same circumstances, and therefore it is palpably 
absurd to limit suffrage or to exclude a portion of the people 
from participation in the government. All being naturally 
equal — for though some men may have more mental capacity 
than others, as we sometimes see some have greater physical 
powers — they have all the same nature ; and therefore govern 
themselves and fulfill the purposes of their creation when they 
all vote at elections and participate in the making of laws. 
For purposes of convenience, a limited number of the people are 
delegated to conduct the government, but the popular will, 
the desire of the people, the rule of the entire citizenship, is 
complete; every vote tells, every man's voice is heard, every 
one governs himself. And the government, limited or rather 



184 NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

confined to its legitimate function of protection, leaves every- 
one a complete and boundless liberty to do every thing or any 
thing that his instincts, wishes, caprices even, may prompt 
him to do, so long as he does not infringe upon the rights, in- 
terests, etc., of others. 

Such, then, are the natural relations we bear to eacli other, 
and the social and governmental adaptations that spring from 
them. The mere conventional formula may be varied at times 
— the circle of individual action contracted or expanded as the 
public exigencies may demand, but the right and the duty of 
every man to an equal participation in the government, or in 
the creation of laws which govern all, is vital, and every man 
denied this is necessarily a slave, for he is then governed by 
the will of others and not by his own, as God and nature have 
ordained he should be. 

There are no contradictions or discords in nature. All crea- 
tures, and the purposes God has assigned to them, are per- 
fectly harmonious ; and all their relations to each other, and 
the duties that spring from them, are in perfect accord. It is 
our ignorance, and sometimes our caprices and vices, that in- 
terrupt this harmony ; but it is consoling to know, that hap- 
piness is inseparable from the due fulfilment of our duties, and 
therefore the wiser the world becomes, the better it will be. 
The man who loves his wife the most will also have the ten- 
derest affection for his children ; those who are most careful to 
respect the rights of others will be the most secure in their 
own rights, and the government, or state, or nation based on 
the natural relations that men bear to each other, will be the 
most prosperous and powerful. 

We are, it is true, at a great distance from the practical or 
complete development of our system, but in theory it is right, 
and most Americans recognize the truth and justice of its ele- 
mentary principles. On the contrary, Europeans, and espe- 



NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 185 

cially Englishmen, have scarcely a perception or glimpse of 
men's natural relations to each other, and their whole social 
and political system, if thus it may be called, is in direct con- 
flict with these relations, with the vital principle of democracy, 
with reason and common sense. A woman is the chief of the 
nation, whose husband is her subject — thus violating the re- 
lations of the sexes — of husband and wife — and thrustino- 

_ o 

her from the normal position of woman as well as contradict- 
ing the relations and duties of citizenship. God created 
her, adapted her, and designed her, for a wife and mother, a 
help-mate to her husband and the teacher and guide of her 
children ; He endowed her with corresponding instincts to 
love, venerate, and obey her husband and devote her life to the 
happiness and welfare of her offspring, and to trample on His 
laws — to smother these instincts and force this woman to be a 
queen, a chief of state, the ruler over millions of men, is as 
sinful as it is irrational, as great an outrage on herself — her 
womanhood — as it is on the people who suffer from it. The 
annual expenditure for royalty amounts to several millions, 
and requires probably that some thirty thousand people should 
be employed or compelled to devote their labor to this pur- 
pose. Thirty thousand men, women, and children, ignorant, 
abject, and miserable, with no chance whatever for education, 
for the cultivation of their faculties or the healthy develop- 
ment of their natures, are bound to lives of toil and a mere ani- 
mal existence in order to furnish means for this one family, 
not of happiness, but of boundless folly, which is supposed to 
constitute royal dignity. God created this woman with the same 
faculties, endowed her with the same instincts, and designed 
her for the same purposes as all other women in England, but 
the human law, disregarding the evident designs of the Al- 
mighty, has impiously sought to make her a different and 
superior being, to reverse the natural relations of the sexes, 



186 NORMAL CONDITIO^ OF THE NEGRO. 

to render her husband subject to her will, to place her 
above many millions of men, the head of the state, to even 
force this fragile, weak, and helpless female to be the com- 
mander-in-chief of their armies, and they crush and pervert 
thirty thousand other people out of the natural order, and 
doom them to a mere animal existence, in order to sustain this 
one family in "royal splendor." The two things are insepa- 
rable— the violation of the natural relation drags after it these 
frightful consequences. All these people thus doomed to ig- 
norance and toil, to support the luxury and grandeur of roy- 
alty, would, under the same circumstances, be just as grand, 
majestic, and royal as the present royal family, and the wrong 
in the present instance may be measured or tested by the con- 
sideration that of these thirty thousand poor, ignorant, abject, 
and toiling creatures, whose labor, or the proceeds of whose labor 
is appropriated to the support of royalty, the majority would 
doubtless exhibit more capacity and refinement than those who 
rule over them, if, standing where nature placed them all in 
common, they were permitted to compete for superiority. 
The same unnatural order prevails on the Continent : the 
natural equality that God has stamped upon the race — for 
they are all white men— is disregarded, and though the people 
are ignorant, debased by poverty, excessive toil, and misery, 
the status quo is preserved alone by force. Nearly four mil- 
lions of armed men are kept in constant readiness to repress 
and keep down the instinct of equality, while a " civil" force 
of perhaps a million more is constantly acting in conjunction 
with the former, in preserving that artificial and unnatural 
rule which the few — a mere fraction of the population — exer- 
cise over the many. And so instinctive and irrepressible is 
this sentiment — this innate and eternal law written by the 
finger of the Almighty on the soul and organism of the race — 
that if these armed forces were withdrawn, every government 



NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 187 

in Europe would be demolished within a week. Nor can the 
existing condition be preserved much longer. Those writers 
ignorant of the essential nature of the race, often indulge in 
absurd fancies in regard to the future of European society. 
They are good enough to say that democratic institutions may 
do for America, but that they will not suit the people of Eu- 
rope, and therefore monarchy is to be a permanent institution. 
Democracy or equality is a fact rather than a principle. Be- 
ings who have the same nature, the same wants, and the same 
instincts will struggle, as they must struggle, for ever, to enjoy 
the same rights and to live out the same life. And though they 
are chained down by ignorance and misery as well as by the 
armed hordes of their tyrants, there can be no peace, no ces- 
sation of the conflict, no stopping-place short of the universal 
recognition of their natural relations to each other, and that 
fixed and eternal equality which the Almighty Creator has 
stamped upon the race and fixed for ever in its physical and 
mental structure. 

If the natural relations that men bear to each other are thus 
misunderstood and disregarded in Europe, it may well be sup- 
posed that they are wholly ignorant of the natural relations of 
races, and without even the remotest conception of the rela- 
tions that naturally exist between white men and negroes. It 
is therefore a subject never introduced or treated of — a terra 
iiicog/ilfa to the European mind, — and dependent as we are on 
European authority, the natural relation of races, and the nor- 
mal condition of the negro, have only quite recently become a 
subject of American investigation. 

But while our writers and men of science have been, and 
quite generally are even now, wholly ignorant of these rela- 
tions, indeed, worse still, in slavish subs-erviency to European 
dictation, have accepted the absurd theories of the former in 
explanation of the phenomena constantly presented to their 



188 NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

view, our people have practically solved their natural relations 
to the inferior race, and placed or rather retained the negro in 
his normal condition. 

There are eight millions of white people and four millions 
of negroes in juxtaposition. The latter are, in domestic subor- 
dination and social adaptation, corresponding with their wants, 
their instincts, their faculties, the nature with which God has 
endowed them. They are different and subordinate creatures, 
and they are in a different and subordinate social position, har- 
monizing with their natural relations to the superior race, and 
therefore they are in their normal condition. This, if not 
exactly a self-evident, is certainly an unavoidable truth — a 
truth that no amount or extent of sophistry, self-deception, 
authoritative dictum, or perverted reasoning can gainsay a 
moment, for it rests upon/Wc/*, fixed forever by the hand of 
the Creator. The negro is different from, and inferior to the 
white man. He is in a different and inferior position, and there- 
fore, of necessity, is in a normal condition. That, as a general 
proposition, is true beyond doubt, for there is no place or mate- 
rial for doubt. God has made him different — widely different, 
as has been shown ; that difference is as unchangeable as are 
any of the works of the Almighty. He has therefore designed 
him, of course, for different purposes— for a different and sub- 
ordinate social position whenever and wherever the races are 
in juxtaposition. It needs no argument to prove this truth, 
great and startling as it must be to those who have never 
before contemplated it. The facts— the simple, palpable, un- 
changeable facts — only need to be stated, and the inference, 
the inductive fact, the absolute truth, is unavoidable. God has 
made the negro different from, and inferior to the white man. 
They are in juxtaposition— the human law corresponds with 
the higher law of the Almighty ; the negro is in a different 
and subordinate position, and therefore in a normal condition. 



NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 189 

But it may be said by some that while this is so, or while the 
negro, in juxtaposition, must be subordinate, it does not follow 
that the actual condition of things at the South is essentially 
right, natural, and just. They would be mistaken, however, 
for the facts involved do not permit or admit of any such 
assertion. The white man is superior, the negro is inferior, 
and therefore the inference is unavoidable that the latter is in 
his normal condition whenever the social law or legal adapta- 
tion is in harmony with these natural relations of white men 
and negroes. It is true that a wide field for inquiry, for com- 
parison, for arriving at relative truth, is here opened to our 
view, but the simple, precise, and unavoidable truth remains 
unaltered and unalterable — the different and inferior negro is 
in a different and inferior social position at the South, and 
therefore in harmony with the natural relations of the races, 
he is in a normal condition. If it were said that the existing 
condition were defective — that in some respects injustice were 
done the negro — that there was a wide field for improvement 
in the social habits of the South — in short, for the progress and 
improvement of Southern society, then there would be reason, 
perhaps, in such suggestions. But to say or to assert that 
the condition of the negro at the South was wrong or unjust 
in its essential character, would be altogether absurd, and an 
abuse of language that none but those wholly ignorant of the 
facts involved would ever, or could ever, indulge in. The 
simple statement of the facts lying at the base of Southern so- 
ciety, however false our perceptions of them, or whatever our 
ignorance of them, or whatever maybe the perversity of those 
who will not seek to comprehend them, is sufficient, when 
clearly presented, to convince every rational mind that the 
negro is in his normal condition only when in social subordi- 
nation to the white man. 

Bu' however obvious or irresistible this momentous truth, 



190 NORMAL CONDITION OP THE NEGRO. 

when it is thus forced upon the mind as an inductive fact, it is 
also demonstrable through processes of comparison, which, if 
not quite so direct or palpable, are equally certain and reliable. 
And the normal condition of the negro, or the social adapta- 
tion at the South, necessarily involves the protection as well as 
the subordination of the inferior race. The two things are in 
fact inseparable, as in the case of parents and children, or the 
relations of husband and wife, or indeed any condition of 
things resting on a basis of natural law. 

Any one capable of reasoning at all must see that four mil- 
lions of subordinate negroes in juxtaposition with eight mik 
lions of superior white men, must be in a subordinate social 
position — that the instinct of self-preservation, the primal 
law, obviously demands that the superior shall place the in- 
ferior in just such position as its own interests and safety may 
need — that it may and should even destroy it, utterly obliter- 
ate it from the earth, if its own safety requires it — though 
such instance never could happen unless some outside force or 
intermeddling brought it about — that the mode or manner, or 
special means are of secondary consideration, and to be deter- 
mined or worked out according to circumstances, the habits, 
progress, and condition of the master race. Contemplating, 
therefore, the great existing fact — the juxtaposition of vast 
masses of widely different social elements at the South — the 
inference is unavoidable, that it is the right and the duty of the 
dominant race to provide for the wants of such a population, 
and that, for the common welfare and safety, they may and must 
place the negro element just where their own reason and ex- 
perience assure them is proper and desirable. This has been 
done, and is done, but instead of the State or government pro- 
viding directly for these things, individuals are left, to a great 
extent at least, to provide for the wants of the subordinate 
race. The motive of personal interest, therefore, is brought 



NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 191 

into action— a motive often, doubtless, stronger than affection, 
and though, like the latter, it will not always save the weak 
and dependent from wrong and cruelty, it usually serves as a 
sufficient protection. The father loves his child, the being so 
inferior, so weak and dependent on his affection. He has abso- 
lute control over the actions, the labor, the time, habits, etc., 
of his son, may compel him to labor for him, or hire out or sell 
his services to another, and it is only on rare occasions that 
this natural affection of the father is not sufficient protection 
for the offspring, and the State is compelled to interpose its 
power to save the latter from the parent's cruelty. It is the 
utmost interest of the father to treat his offspring with kind- 
ness, and though affection is the dominant feeling, his real in- 
terests are always advanced by this treatment, so that it might 
be said that the man who loves his children most will have the 
most useful and the best children. And in the relation of hus- 
band and wife a similar result necessarily follows : the husband 
who loves his wife most tenderly will — other things being 
equal— always have the best wife, and the wife who loves her 
husband and children most devotedly will be rewarded by the 
greatest love and' the greatest happiness in return. 

In the case of the master and so-called slave, interest instead 
of affection is the dominant feeling ; but even here they are 
inseparable as well as in the relations just referred to. It 
is the utmost interest of the master to treat his negro subject 
with the greatest kindness, and in exact proportion as he does 
so, he calls into action the affections of the latter. Every one 
who practically understands the negro, knows that the strong- 
est affection his nature is capable of feeling is love for his mas- 
ter—that affection for wife, parents, or offspring, all sink into 
insignificance in comparison with the strong and devoted love 
he gives to the superior being who guides, cares, and provides 
for all his wants. 



192 NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

There is, then, this radical difference between parent and 
child, and master and " slave" — the first, prompted by affec- 
tion, is rewarded by interest, while the latter, impelled by 
interest, is followed by affection ; and the grand result in both 
cases is happiness, well-being, the mutual benefit and common 
welfare of all concerned — that universal reward which God 
bestows on all His creatures, when, recognizing their natural 
relations to each, they adapt their domestic habits and social 
regulations to those relations. 

The popular mind of the North, so deplorably ignorant of 
all the facts of Southern society, has a general conception, per- 
haps, of negro subordination at the South, but none whatever 
of the reciprocities of the social condition. The negro — a dif- 
ferent and inferior creature — must be in a social position har- 
monizing with ibis great, fundamental, and unchangeable fact ; 
but while he owes obedience, natural, organic, and spontane- 
ous, he also has the natural right of protection. Or, in other 
words, while he owes obedience to his master, the latter owes 
him protection, care, guidance, and provision for all his wants, 
and he can not relieve himself of this duty or these duties 
without damaging himself. For example : the master who 
overworked his people, or underfed them, or treated them 
cruelly in any way, would necessarily compromise his interests 
to the precise extent that he practiced, or sought to practice, 
these cruelties. They would become feeble from over-exer- 
tion, or weak and prostrated from the want of healthy food; 
while indifference to the master's interests, sullenness, per- 
haps sometimes fierce hate, would impel them to damage his 
property, and in any and every case their labor would be 
less valuable. Furthermore, God has so adapted the negro 
that he can not be overworked ; and though the master or 
overseer may kill him in the effort, he can not, nor can any 
human power, force him beyond a given point, or compel him 



NORMAL CONDITION OP THE NEGRO. 193 

to that extreme exertion which the poor white laborer of Eu- 
rope is often forced into. Subordination and protection, the 
obedience of the inferior and the care of the superior, the sub- 
jection of the negro and the guidance of the white man, are 
therefore inseparable, aud when we outgrow and abandon the 
mental habits borrowed from Europe and designate the social 
condition where these elements exist, by a proper term or 
word, it should be a compound one that embodies both of 
these things. 

Such, then, are the domestic habits and social adaptations 
at the South, or where widely different races are in juxtaposi- 
tion, and which, in truth, spring from the necessities of social 
existence whenever they are found together. But, as already 
remarked, the truth, essential justice, beneficence, and neces- 
sity of this condition — this subordination on the one hand 
and protection on the other — while an obvious, and, indeed, 
unavoidable conclusion or inference from the great and un- 
changeable facts involved — are equally demonstrable by com- 
parison with other conditions. Or, in other words, while 
the mere statement of existing facts, in their natural order 
and their true relations, irresistibly and unavoidably forces 
the mind to the conclusion that Southern society reposes 
on a basis of natural law and everlasting truth, its essential 
justice, naturalness, and beneficence may be made equally 
clear to the mind by comparing it with other conditions 
where these elements are found to exist. We absolutely 
know nothing of the negro of antiquity except that recently 
revealed on the Egyptian monuments, through the labors of 
Champolion and others, and possibly a glimpse occasionally 
of negro populations through Roman history. The ignorant 
Abolitionists, and the scarcely less ignorant European ethnolo- 
gists, on this subject, fancy negro empires and grand civil- 

9 



194 NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

izations long since extinct; and Livingstone and others, Avith 
the false and nonsenioal notion that there should be found 
remains of these imaginary empires, of course succeeded in 
finding them occasionally, or the interests of the " friends of 
humanity" would languid, and perhaps subside altogether. 
But the author desires to say to the reader that while, as an 
anatomist, he knows that an isolated civilized negro is just as im- 
possible as a straight-haired or white-skinned negro, he has also 
consulted history, ancient and modem, European and Orien- 
tal, Pagan and Christian, and in the tout ensemble of the ex- 
perience of mankind there is nothing written — book, pamphlet, 
or manuscript — in the world that casts any light whatever on 
this matter, or that authorizes the notion that population*, 
where the negro element dominated, had a history. Since 
the great "anti-slavery" imposture of modern times began, 
there are many writers and Lecturers who assume such things, 
as that negro empires had often existed and exercised vast influ- 
ences on the progress of mankind — that the rich and powerful 
republic of Carthage was negro — that even Hannibal, the man 
who so long contested the empire of the world with the grand 
old Romans, was a negro — indeed, some of these ignorant and 
impious people have assumed that Christ was a negro ; but 
it is repeated, there is no negro history, nothing whatever, 
except what we now see on the Egyptian monuments, that 
indicate the position of the negro or the condition of society 
when hi juxtaposition with white men. 

As depicted on the monuments, the negro was then as he is 
now at the South, in a position of subordination ; while iso- 
lated, he was as he is now, a simple, unproductive, non-advanc- 
ing savage. In this condition of isolation he multiplies him- 
self, and therefore is in a natural condition. His acute and 
powerful senses make amends for his limited intelligence, and 
enable him to contend with the fiercer and more powerful crea- 



NORMAL CONDITION OP THE NEGRO. 195 

tures of the animal creation, while the fervid suns and luxuriant 
soils of the tropics, where the earth may be said to produce 
spontaneously, enable him to live with little more exertion 
than simply to gather their rich and nutritious products. It is 
a natural condition, so far as it goes, for, as has been said, he 
increases and multiplies his kind ; but it can not have been 
designed as the permanent condition of the race, for that in- 
volves the anomaly of waste, uselessness, a broad blank in the 
economy of the universe. But as that aspect of the subject 
will be discussed in another place, it need not be entered on 
here. 

The condition of savagism, or whatever we may term it, 
where the negro is isolated and without any thing to call his 
wonderful powers of imitation into action, where he is simply 
a useless, non-advancing heathen, surely no one, however per- 
verted his mind may be on this subject, will venture to say is 
a preferable condition to that which he enjoys at the South. 
It might suffice to say that he increases with more than double 
rapidity, to demonstrate the fact of his superiority of condi- 
tion in the latter ; but there are moral considerations that show 
this with still greater distinctness. It is true that we must 
not take our own standard to test this matter, or we must not 
assume that that which would constitute our own happiness 
would also secure the greatest happiness of the negro. Of 
course the white man never did and never could live such a life 
as the isolated negro ; but, contemplating the negro in the 
South as he now exists, in comparison with the condition of 
the isolated negro in Africa, will any one or can any one doubt 
for an instant the immense superiority of the former condi- 
tion ? He is cared for in his childhood by his master as well 
as his mother, taken care of when ill, always supplied with an 
abundance of food and clothing, given every chance for the 
development of his imitative faculties, permitted to marry 



196 NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

generally as he pleases, to feel always that he has a guide and 
protector, and a constant, peaceful home ; and in his old age will 
be cared for and decently buried with all the sanctions and 
comforts of the Christian religion. In Africa, a negro, isolated 
from the white man, rarely has a home, rarely knows his 
father, is left unprotected in his childhood to all the chances 
and uncertainties of savagism, sometimes nearly starved, at 
other times gorged with unwholesome food, without any pos- 
sible chance for education or the development of his facul- 
ties, liable at any moment of his life, in some wild eruption 
of hostile tribes, to be carried off a slave, perhaps to be eaten 
by the victors, and after running the gauntlet of savagism, if lie 
lives to old age, to be left to perish of hunger, if no longer 
able to seek food for himself. But it is quite unnecessary to 
multiply words on this point ; the condition of the negro in 
America, under the broad glare of American civilization and 
the beneficent influences of Christianity, is so vastly and in- 
deed immeasurably superior to that of the African or isolated 
negro, that we have no terms in our language that can truly 
or fully express it, We ourselves, under our beneficent demo- 
cratic institutions, doubtless enjoy an extent of happiness or 
well-being, over that of the masses of our race in the Old 
World, somewhat difficult to measure or express in words, and 
it is reasonable to say that the negro population of the South, 
relatively or comparatively, enjoy even greater happiness, when 
contrasted with African savagism. There is, in fact, no other 
condition to compare with, for freedom, the imaginary state 
that the Abolitionists have labored for so long, is not a condi- 
tion, and has an existence in their imaginations alone, and not 
in the actual breathing and living world about us. They have a 
theory, or rather an abstract idea, that the negro is a black-white 
' man, a black Caucasian, a creature like ourselves except in 
color, and therefore that, placed under the same circumstances — 



NORMAL CONDITION OP THE NEGRO. 197 

that is, given the same rights and held to the same responsi- 
bilities — he will manifest the same qualities, etc. On this 
foolish assumption legislatures and individuals have acted, 
and both in the South and in the North considerable num- 
bers of these people have been thrust from their normal condi- 
tion into what ? Why, into the condition of widely different 
beings. 

If any one were to propose to give the negro straight hair, 
or a flowing beard, or transparent color, or to force on him 
any other physical feature of the white man, everybody would 
denounce the wrong as well as the folly of thus torturing the 
poor creature with that which nature forbids to be done. It 
has been shown that, in the mental qualities and instincts of 
the negro, the differences between him and the white man are 
exactly measured by the differences in the physical qualities, 
and therefore the efforts of the Abolitionists to endow the 
negro with freedom involve exactly the same impieties and 
the same follies as if they sought to change the color of the 
skin. Or if it was sought to force the child to live out the 
life of the adult — or the woman that of the man, or to compel 
our domestic animals to change their manifestations and to 
contradict the nature God has given them, it would be 
promptly denounced as cruel, impious, and foolish. All that 
could be done would be to destroy them — to shorten the life 
of the unhappy creatures ; and this is exactly what has been 
done, and is now done, in regard to negroes ; but, owing to a 
universal ignorance and wide-spread misconception, that which 
should be denounced" as the grossest wrong has been regarded 
as the highest morality and philanthropy ! 

The negro is thrust from the care and protection of a mas- 
ter at the South, but he has none of the responsibilities of 
society laid on him, and furthermore, there is no very pressing 
competition for the means of subsistence. He has nothing of 



198 NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

what are called rights — that is, is not forced to live the life of 
another being — and though he has no master to teach and 
guide him, his powers of imitation are, to a certain extent, 
called into action, for he is still in juxtaposition and subordina- 
tion. Buteven under these favorable circumstances, he rapidly— 
as contrasted with those under the care of masters — declines and 
dies. There is, at this time, a large number of these people 
in Maryland, Virginia and other transition States. Their con- 
dition is truly deplorable, and is every day getting worse, for 
the increase of whites is every day adding to the pressure on 
them, and rendering the means of subsistence more difficult to 
obtain. It seems to many, doubtless, a great wrong to place 
them again in a normal condition, and true relation to the 
whites — which would be a wrong like that of the inebriate 
forced back into temperance — a process, in truth, of great suf- 
fering, but desirable in the end. If the abnormal habit of 
drunkenness continues, the man will die within a given time ; 
but if he reforms and recovers his normal state, he may live 
many years. 

There will be few, if any, more negroes "emancipated," as 
forcing them out of a normal condition has been termed, in the 
South, and therefore it is only a question of time when these 
people, left as they are now, will become extinct. As a ques- 
tion of kindness and humanity, therefore, it is like that of the 
drunkard : left as they are, they must perish ; but if restored 
to a normal state, whatever their temporary suffering, they or 
their descendants may live forever. Most unfortunately, how- 
ever, there is another difficulty involved in the fortunes of 
these poor people. They have a large infusion of white blood 
■ — a very large portion, perhaps, are mulattoes, and therefore 
while in the case of the typical negro there could be no doubt 
where true humanity pointed us, in the case of these mongrels 
there is room for doubt and difficulty. But in the more 



NORMAL CONDITION OP THE NEGEO. 199 

Northern States, where it is sought to force the habitudes of 
white men on them, they perish rapidly. The mortality is 
greater in New England than in the Middle States, and great- 
est of all in Massachusetts where they are citizens, and the 
ignorant and misguided, however well-meaning, " friends of 
freedom" have their own way, and give full scope to their ter- 
rible kindness. The whole subject may be summed up thus : — 
The negro, in a normal condition, increases more rapidly than 
the whites — for the negress, if not more prolific, escapes by her 
lower sensibility the numerous chances of miscarriage, prema- 
ture births, weakly children, etc., which ordinarily attend on 
the higher and more susceptible organization of the white fe- 
male. 

The " free" or abnormal negro of the Southern States tends to 
extinction — of the Middle States still more rapidly — and finally, 
most rapidly of all in New England. Or the actual laws gov- 
erning this matter may may be summed up thus : — In precise 
proportion as the negro is thrust from his normal condition 
into that of the white man, he tends to extinction, or one 
might say, that precisely as the rights of the white man are 
forced on the negro, he is destroyed. All the negroes brought 
to this continent were in a normal condition. The monstrous 
assumption set up by British writers when the colonists began 
to throw off the British dominion, that negroes were blacfo- 
white men, and, naturally considered, entitled to the same 
status, after nearly a hundred years, and an amount of wrong, 
falsehood, and suffering to these people that is beyond com- 
putation, has at last culminated. From this time forth, few, 
if any, will be " emancipated." Indeed, it is far more likely that 
the numbers restored to a normal condition will outnumber 
those thrust from their natural relations to white men. If all 
the legislation on the subject were suddenly blotted out, of 
course there would be no such thing as a " free negro" on this 



200 NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGEO. 

continent, and this is the point towards which the course 
of American society is now rapidly tending. It may be 
somewhat difficult to determine that period — for we know not 
what may be the action of many of the States that have a con- 
siderable population of this kind — but one can not err when 
saying that it can not be remote, and it is absolutely certain 
to arrive within the next hundred years. Indeed, it is most 
probable that from the culmination of the great " anti-slavery" 
imposture, or from the starting-point of the reaction, to the 
final period when such a social monstrosity as a " free" negro 
Avill be entirely extinct in the New World, the interval will 
be less than that of the strange and wide-spread delusion 
which has so long run riot .over the understanding, the com- 
mon sense, the interests, and self-respect of our people. 

Of course, no comparison proper can be made with so shad- 
owy and intangible a thing as this. It is not a condition — 
it is only an attempt after that which neither has nor can have 
an existence. If it had been assumed simply that the status 
of the negro was wrong at the South, and that some other 
status was proper for him, then possibly an experiment would 
have been legitimate. But, as it was assumed that the negro was 
a Caucasian, whose color merely was different, and naturally 
entitled to the position of the white man, all these efforts were 
made to reduce the assumption to practice, and compel him to 
live out the life of the former. There could be and can be 
only a single end to such effort. God created him a negro, a 
different and inferior being, and of course no human power 
could alter or modify, to the millionth part of an atom, the 
work of the Eternal. That which destroys a creature, or under 
which he dies, can never be right, or even approach to that 
which is right. When nature is so outraged that she refuses 
to indorse the human action, or when she in mercy interposes 
her power to limit such action, then we can not possibly mis- 



NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 201 

take the wrong we are doing, or attempting to do. It is an 
historical fact that slaves never propagated while in that con- 
dition, and the supply was constantly kept up by fresh wars 
and increased captives. It Avas such a stupendous outrage on 
the natural relations, that men of the same species bear to each 
other, or on that natural and unchangeable equality common 
to the race, that nature refused to propagate it, or to consent 
to its permanent existence. Nature also refuses offspring to 
prostitution — that terrible cancer so corrupting to Northern 
society, and who does not see her wisdom and beneficence in 
thus refusing a permanent existence to so foul a blot on the 
sexual relations ? So, too, in the case of mulattoism, where 
a monstrous violation of the physical integrity of the races 
is involved, nature interposes and forbids it to live. And 
in incest — the violation of the laws of consanguinity, where 
relatives intermarry — nature appropriately punishes them, 
through the idiocy and impotency of their offspring, which is 
always forbidden to exist beyond a determinate period. Free 
negroism, therefore — the attempt to force a different and in- 
ferior being to live out the life of a different and superior 
being — is not a condition, and can not be compared with that 
which is, or that which the higher law of nature grants, a 
fixed order of life. There are, then, only two possible condi- 
tions for the negro — isolation or juxtaposition with the white 
man — African heathenism or subordination to a master — a 
blank in the economy of the universe, or the social order of the 
South, where he is an important element in the civilization, 
progress, and general welfare of both races. It is not in the 
scope of this work to treat of the natural relations or social 
adaptations of other races. They must be determined by experi- 
ence, though the starting point— the fundamental truth — that 
when in juxtaposition they must occupy a subordinate social 
position, corresponding with the degree of inferiority to the 

9* 



202 NOBMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. 

white man, may be said to be self-evident, or, at all events, an 
unavoidable truth. 

In conclusion, it may be well to repeat the great leading 
truths that underlie the subject discussed in this chapter. 

All of God's creatures, animal as well as human, have a 
right to live out the life — the specific nature — that He has en- 
dowed them with, and we have comprehended this great, vital, 
and fundamental law in respect to our domestic animals, and 
generally conform to it. The natural relations of the sexes — 
of parents and offspring — are also understood, and generally 
lived up to in our daily life. The natural relations of men to 
each other are less understood, but the natural order, the 
equality of rights, and equality of duties, based on an equality 
of wants, is a vital principle of Christianity, and however far 
we may be from living it out in practice, our political system, 
and the whole superstructure of our civil and legal institutions, 
repose upon this fundamental law of nature. 

This natural order is generally disregarded in the Old 
World, though even there, with all their numerous false tra- 
ditions, relics of barbarism, and ancient wrongs, as well as 
modern corruptions, they are forced, to a certain extent, in 
their legal and civil institutions, to recognize it. Nature abso- 
lutely forbids any change or any violation of her laws, or, in 
other words, the work of the Almighty can not be altered by 
human force or accident. The millions of Europe are, there- 
fore, unchanged in their essential natures, and the few who 
rule and wrong them are only able to prevent the development 
of their specific and latent capabilities by their systems of re- 
pression. But the natural order — the natural relations they 
bear to each other — the inherent and eternal equality that God 
has stamped forever on the organism of the race, is perpetually 
struggling to manifest itself ; and though buried in a profound 
animalism, though deluded by false theories and corrupted by 



NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGEO. 203 

innumerable lies, and steeped in poverty and misery fathomless 
and measureless, they are only temporarily kept from asserting 
the natural order and specific nature of the race by four mil- 
lions of bayonets. 

The natural relations of races, and especially of the white 
man and negro, have been wholly misunderstood, for, ignorant 
of the nature and specific wants of the negro, it necessarily fol- 
lowed that it should be so. But while in theory we have been 
ignorant of these relations, the people of the South have solved 
them in practice. Their actual experience of the negro nature, 
of its wants, its capacities, its industrial adaptations, perhaps 
we may say, the instinctive necessities of a society where 
widely different social elements are in juxtaposition, have de- 
veloped a social order in practical harmony with the best inter- 
ests and highest happiness of both races. That society rests 
on the same basis as that of the North, with the superadded 
negro element, which, in social subordination corresponding 
with its natural inferiority and natural relations to the white 
man, is immovable and everlasting, so long as the foundations 
of the world remain unaltered and unalterable. Ignorance 
and impiety may beat against it ; folly, delusion, and madness 
may waste their wild energies in blind warfare on it ; European 
kings and nobles, all those who live and flourish for a time on 
the perversion of the natural order and the degradation of so 
many millions of their kind — their natural equals — may com- 
bine to overthrow it ; dupes, instruments, open foes and secret 
traitors may aid them, and the great ignorant and deluded 
masses for a time may be blindly impelled in this direction, 
but all in vain ; the social order — the supremacy of the master 
and the obedience of the " slave" — will remain forever, for it 
is based on the higher law of the Almighty, the natural rela- 
tions of the races, the organic and eternal superiority of the 
white man and the organic and everlasting inferiority of the 
negro. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CHATTELISM. 

The common European notion (and the American, borrowed 
from it), regards the American "slave" as a chattel — a thing 
sold like a horse or dog, and equally the absolute property of 
his master. Lord Brougham and others have denounced this 
barbarism, as they have called it, with great bitterness, and 
the former has declared that it is immoral, abhorrent, and even 
illegal "for man to hold property in man" — a declaration that 
might be true enough, perhaps, if negroes were black-white 
men, as supposed, but which, in view of the actual facts in- 
volved, is simply absurd. Tiny suppose that negroes in 
America are held by the same tenure that the Romans and 
other nations of antiquity held their slaves. But there is no 
resemblance whatever, and, in truth, it would be difficult to 
find anywhere in history conditions so absolutely and so widely 
different. All the so-called heathen nations had slaves, or 
rather they had captives taken in war, whose lives were for- 
feited, and who thus became the property of their conquerors. 
The rule or custom seems to have been universal, and it was 
only after the introduction of Christianity that it became obso- 
lete. A Roman army invaded Gaul or Germany — a great 
battle or series of battles occurred — those captured on the 
field became the property of the victors, while the nation or 
country became a Roman province, and ever after paid tribute 
to the Roman civil officers. Gaul, Britain, most of Germany, 
indeed, nearly all the then known world, were thus overrun 



CHATTELISM. 205 

by the Roman armies, and the vast multitudes that were de- 
feated in battle were carried off to Italy to cultivate the lands 
of the Roman nobility, There was no question of freedom or 
slavery, or of rights of any kind involved — the man risked his 
life, and if defeated, this life was forfeited to the victor. The 
latter might or might not slay him the next morning, or the 
next week, or the next year, or twenty years after, just as he 
pleased. He might send him to work on his lands in Italy, 
keep him as a domestic in his household, compel him to enter 
the arena and combat as a gladiator for the popular amuse- 
ment, or direct him to be crucified or given to feed his fishes, or 
he might sell him to others, who, of course, had the same control 
over him ; or, finally, by one supreme act of generosity, he might 
give him back his forfeited life, when, as a freedman — not 
freeman — he entered the ranks of ordinary citizenship and was 
lost in the mighty mass of Romans that made up the popula- 
tion of the great city. Freedom or slavery, or what, in mod- 
ern times, is called such, had nothing to do with the matter. 
It was a question of life and death rather than of freedom and 
slavery. The life, the actual physical existence was forfeited 
— the man had no right to live, and only did live by the suffer- 
ance of the captor or master, and therefore all subordinate 
considerations were lost in this one great, all-dominating fact. 
Many wise, learned, and accomplished men were slaves or 
were of this unfortunate class, and remained thus through life, 
subject often, doubtless, to the caprices and cruelty of illiter- 
ate and brutal owners, who at any moment could put them to 
the torture or to a cruel death. The rule was universal among 
all the ancient nations, except the Hebrews, who, in some re- 
spects, or as regarded their own people, made some humane 
modifications. It was entirely personal — the state or govern- 
ment having nothing to do with the matter either as regarded 
the original forfeit or the cancelling of the bonds and the 



200 CHATTELISM. 

restoration to liberty, or rather to life, of the unfortunate cap- 
tive. 

There was a certain social prejudice in respect to freedmen, 
or the children of those who had been slaves, but there does 
not appear to have been any legal or political disability. They 
had forfeited their lives — they became absolutely dead in law, 
mere things, chattels, or property of their owners, of which 
the government or state took no more account than of horses 
or oxen, or any other property ; but the moment that their 
lives were restored to them, then they at once entered the 
ranks of citizenship with all the rights and privileges common 
in those days, and in those relatively barbarous times. 

There were some incidental features or phases of this terri- 
ble condition that are too marked to pass over without notice, 
as they tend to show, in a very striking manner, the wide and 
indeed unapproachable distance between it and that which, in 
our own times, has been so generally confounded with it. 
Servile wars were almost constantly occurring events. Opin 
ion, even in the rudest times, has always, to a certain extent, 
governed the world, and the universal custom of enslaving 
those defeated in battle was submitted to in the first instance 
without a murmur. It was the fortune of war, and no one dis- 
puted the inexorable rule which doomed them to become the 
absolute chattels or property of the victor ; but when their 
numbers increased to any considerable extent in any locality, 
the natural instinct which told them they were the equals, and 
very often the superiors of those who owned them, could not 
be restrained, and the long and terrible servile wars almost 
always raging within the bosom of the Roman Empire prob- 
ably weakened and more than any other tiling prepared it for 
that awful overthrow which finally overtook the Roman 
colossus. Another equally striking feature distinguished this 
condition. The slave population never increased itself in the 



CHATTELISM. 207 

regular and natural order. Most of them were adult males, 
originally, and the small number of females ma)- sufficiently 
account for the constant tendency to extinction ; but beyond 
this, the abnormal condition, the terrible and transcendent 
wrong of forcing beings like themselves, with the same wants 
and the same instincts as their masters, to lives in absolute 
and abject subjection to the wills of others, was necessarily 
incompatible with a permanent existence. 

This universal custom prevailed — all men, even the wisest 
and best, in their profound ignorance of their own nature, be- 
lieved slavery to be right, just as many good men in our own 
times believe that the European condition, which dooms the 
millions to subjection to the few, is right ; but it was so utterly 
in conflict with natural instinct that the servile population 
tended constantly to extinction, and therefore, as observed, it 
soon died out when the spirit of Christianity modified the cus- 
toms of war, and the conquered became prisoners to be ex- 
changed, instead of slaves subject to the caprices and cruelties 
of creatures like themselves. Some superficial writers, igno- 
rant of the underlying facts, have supposed that Greece and 
Rome were great and prosperous because they had slaves, a 
process of reasoning quite equal to saying that a man enjoyed 
good health because he had a fever-sore on one of his legs ! 
These nations and all other nations have been prosperous and 
powerful in precise proportion to the number of free men, and 
weak and contemptible in exact proportion to the multiplicity 
of slaves — a truth as evident at this day as in any other, and 
rendered more palpable in our own history and condition than 
ever before. Greece and Rome were great and powerful, in con- 
trast with the great Oriental empires — Persian, Babylonian, 
Egyptian, etc. — because there was a large free population in 
the former, while in the latter they were all slaves, or the 
slaves of slaves. Of course no such condition could exist in 



CH ATTELI S M. 

our times, and the most ignorant and abject portion of the 
European population could not be placed or kept in such posi- 
tion a single hour. The Oriental populations still practice it, 
to a certain extent, perhaps. The Turks, when they invaded 
the lower empire and captured Constantinople, made slaves 
of their prisoners, and long trains of unhappy beings, wealthy 
matrons and delicately nurtured young girls, chained by the 
wrists to their own servants, or to rude soldiers and uncouth 
peasants, were marched off to become the abject and miserable 
slaves of still more gross and brutal masters. The sale of Cir- 
cassian girls for Turkish harems is altogether a different affair, 
and however revolting to our notions and habits, has nothing 
in common with the condition historically known to us as 
slavery. The essential fact in this condition, as will be seen, 
was the forfeited life; all other facts hinged on that, and the idea 
of property or chattelism was incidental — a mere result. When 
the man's life was forfeited, when he was deemed to be dead 
in law, when his captor could do as he pleased with him, 
crucify, torture, or destroy him altogether, then it necessarily 
followed that he was a chattel, or a thing that he would be 
apt to make as profitable as possible, and this self-interest was 
the sole protection of the miserable creature. It therefore 
was, doubtless, a great interest — some of the Roman nobles 
owning many thousands of them, though, except in respect to 
the servile wars, almost constantly raging within some portion 
of the empire, the government seems to have had nothing to 
do with slaves or slavery. It was wont, however, to resort to 
terrible punishments to keep them in subjection, and it was 
not uncommon to line the highways leading into the city for 
forty miles with crosses, on which these wretched beings were 
suspended, and left in sight and hearing of each other, until 
death relieved them from their sufferings. 

Such was Roman slavery, as it has been described by his- 



OHATTELISM. 209 

torians of the time — a condition not at all involving what we 
call freedom or rights of any kind, but simply that of a for- 
feited existence, and which, if given back by the owner, the 
man was restored to life, to a legal existence, to his normal 
condition, and, without the slightest interference of the govern- 
ment, was at once absorbed in the general citizenship. Of 
course there is no resemblance or even approximation to the 
social order of the South ; indeed, as observed, it is difficult to 
conceive of conditions more utterly opposed or unlike each 
other. As has been shown elsewhere, the labor, the service, 
the industrial forces of the negro were essential to the cultiva- 
tion of the soil and the growth of the indigenous products that 
belong to the great intertropical regions of the American con- 
tinent. Ships, therefore, were fitted out for this purpose to 
bring negroes to the New World, not to make slaves of them, 
or to transform them into things, but to make their labor 
available for the common good of mankind. Much wrong, 
cruelty, and inhumanity, it is quite likely, have been practiced, 
but the motive and the object were right, of course, for these 
had their origin in human necessities and human welfare. The 
abuses we have nothing more to do with ; the object and the 
essential fact — the service — remains, and will remain forever, 
if the great tropical centre of the continent remains civilized, 
instead of being transformed into a barren waste. The service 
of the negro, his industrial capacity, his labor, is a thing that 
may be estimated as easily and accurately as any other species 
of property, and therefore is property, and to the precise ex- 
tent necessary to enforce this labor or this service the owner 
of it has absolute control over the person of the negro. There 
is not, nor should there be, any difference between this pro- 
perty and other property, and to this extent it may be called 
chattelism, for, as observed, it may be as easily and precisely 
fixed or defined as any other property. The master takes care 



210 CHATTELISil. 

of him in childhood and in sickness, clothes, feeds, and provides 
for his old age, or for the loss of health, etc., and estimating or 
comparing these things with his services, he is able to fix a 
positive value to the labor of the negro, and this, like any other 
property, he may disj)ose of to any one else, if he chooses to 
do so. This property he must have absolute control over, and 
therefore, to the precise extent needed to make it available, 
he has absolute control over the person of the negro. The 
ignorant abolition writer says, "the slave is put upon the 
auction-block, examined and handled precisely as the horse, or 
other animal, and knocked off to the highest bidder ; he fol- 
lows his master home, to be dealt with just as any other 
animal." 

It is true, there is a seeming resemblance, but if we follow 
them home and observe what follow.-, then it will be seen that 
there is no resemblance at all. The master takes care of his 
horse, for such is his interest ; lie may even have a liking, a 
kind of affection for him ; but it* sick or worn out, or if he falls 
and breaks a leg, hi- blows his brains out, and after taking off 
hi- -kin, leaves the carcass t<> be devoured by the dogs or vul- 
tures. In the case of the negro he also takes care of him and 
treats him well, for it is his highest interest to do so, and often 
feels an affection, and a very strong one, for him. If ill, he 
Bends for a surgeon and treats him as men usually treat their 
children. He is a part of the household, belongs to the family, 
and is usually strongly attached to the master and the master's 
children. His own wants are all attended to. He has his 
cabin, his patch of garden, his poultry, etc., very often his bale 
of cotton. He is permitted to choose his own wife, to enjoy 
all the domestic happiness that his nature is capable of, and if 
he fulfils his duty industriously, promptly, and honestly, then 
the master may be said to have no more control over him ; but 
should he reach old age, break his leg, or in any way become 



CHATTELISil. 211 

disabled and useless, if the master should blow his brains out 
he would be hanged as a murderer. There is surely no resem- 
blance in these things, none whatever ; indeed it may be said 
that the one essential tact accomplished, the " service" duly 
rendered, the master's absolute control ceases. He must still 
care for and protect the negro and provide for him in sickness 
and old age, but his absolute rule is always within well-defined 
limits, and beyond them the master may not go. He may 
enforce service, and if the negro disobeys, punish him, or if he 
resists the reasonable will of the master, compel obedience — 
absolute, unquestioning obedience. But the laws of every 
Southern State protect the " slave'' from the caprices and cruel- 
ties of the master just as in the iSTorthern States they protect 
the child from a sometimes passionate and brutal lather. 

In the previous chapter it- has been shown that the negro is 
in his normal condition only when in social subordination to 
the white man — for that is the natural relation of the races 
whenever or wherever they are in juxtaposition; but the precise 
form of this subordination may be modified, perhaps, by time 
and circumstances. Subordination and protection exist to- 
gether — indeed, are inseparable. The strong should protect 
the weak : the superior white man, who demands the obedi- 
ence of the inferior negro, should also protect this feebler being; 
and such is the social condition at the South. Owning the 
the service of the negro, it is the highest interest of the mas- 
ter to take the utmost care of him, while the latter has an 
equal interest — relatively considered — in being honest, indus- 
trious, and faithful to the master. Indeed, it is impossible to 
perceive any antagonism of interests in this condition, and corn- 
pared with any other, it may be said, without chance of suc- 
cessful contradiction, that it is the most harmonious in its 
essential principles known to our times. It originated in an 
absolute want — the service of the negro — that industrial capac- 



212 CHATTELISM. 

ity which he alone can furnish, and this service is the essential 
feature of the domestic institutions of the South. It was and 
is made a property that may be sold or exchanged as promptly 
as any other property, and the person of the negro is subject 
to the absolute control of the master to an extent necessary to 
enforce this power, but no further. There is still a large mar- 
gin for self-control, for all the self-government that nature de- 
mands, for the gratification of all his wants and the full de- 
velopment of all his faculties. This is demonstrated beyond 
doubt, for he rapidly multiplies, while if he were denied the 
rights that nature accords him, his instincts repressed, his 
wants forbidden gratification, like the Roman slave, or like the 
so-called free negro of the North, he would become languid 
and diseased, and tend rapidly to extinction. But while the 
existing condition is thus healthy, natural, and just, as before 
remarked, it is quite likely that, in the future time, it may be 
widely changed in its details. This relation — the subordina- 
tion with the inseparable protection — can never be changed 
without destruction to both, or without social suicide; but 
the social condition may some day be modified sufficiently, 
perhaps, to do away with any defects, if such exist at 
present. 

In another place the subject of climate and industrial adap- 
tation is fully considered, and it will suffice to remark in this 
place that the tropics are the natural centre of existence of the 
negro, and some day not very remote our negro population, 
with a few exceptions, perhaps, will be found within the inter- 
tropical region. And when that day comes, it is quite likely 
that some modification will be worked out which, while the 
essential principles of the existing condition are preserved, 
chattelism, or that seeming personal property in the negro now 
so extensively associated in the popular mind at the North as 
wrong, may disappear altogether. We are only just emerging, 



CHATTELISM. 213 

as it were, into a boundless field for progress, for inquiry, for 
experiment, for social development, for working out the great 
problem of humanity. All Europe is in utter ignorance and 
blindness ; and if the whole political and social order is not 
in conflict with the natural order, the latter, is, at all events, 
repressed, and forbidden a development. We, ourselves, have 
reached a comparatively far advanced position — the grand 
position and declaration of the men of 1776, that all men (of 
course of our own race) are created equal, and designed by the 
Almighty for the same liberty, etc. ; and we have based our polit- 
ical order on this fundamental and everlasting truth ; but while 
in theory we have thus recognized the relations that nature 
has decreed between individuals, in practice we have made but 
little advance over the peoj^le of Europe. 

Our cities and towns are filled to overflowing with poverty, 
ignorance, vice, and misery, and though much of this is the 
direct result~of the wrongs and oppressions of the Old World, 
and all of it legitimate consequences of the European practice 
which yet prevails among us, especially in the States most con- 
nected by commerce, literature, and opinion with the Old 
World, our social progress is small, indeed, compared with our 
political enlightenment. But the masses are, however slow the 
progress, becoming more and more intelligent, and consequently 
more virtuous and happy, for, however frequent the exceptions 
among individuals, morality among the masses always keeps 
pace with their intelligence. And though the social condition 
at the South is less, infinitely less defective than at the North, 
and social progress in the future has a comparatively circum- 
scribed field of action, there are many things, doubtless, which, 
in the future time, will be widely altered from the present. 
God has organized and fixed the nature and relations of His 
creatures, so that there is no conflict of duties, and that which 
beat secures the happiness of ourselves, also accomplishes the 



214 CHATTELISM. 

happiness of others, whether they be our equals or our in- 
feriors, men of our own race or negroes. Thus, when the 
dominant race — the citizenship of the South — comprehend most 
clearly and truly what their own welfare demands, then, too. 
and of necessity, will the best interests of the negro be secured. 
The perverse fanatics at the North, who, unmindful of, and 
indeed dead to the woes of their suffering brethren, imagine 
the most terrible miseries among negroes at the South, can not 
continue much longer in their unnatural delusions, and wdien 
the pressure of their attempted interference is withdrawn, 
earnest and conscientious citizens will doubtless inquire into 
those possible social defects that may exist among them, and 
strive to apply the appropriate corrections. What these de- 
fects may consist in, the writer does not assume to decide or 
to understand, but after a long-continued and patient investi- 
gation of the social condition of the South, he thinks he can 
not be mistaken when he declares that they are wholly or 
mainly confined to the citizenship, and he is wholly and abso- 
lutely incapable of comprehending any wrong whatever in the 
Fundamental social relations of the races or so-called slavery 
of the South. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

EDUCATION OF NEGROES. 

The fact that the negro is a negro, carries with it the infer- 
ence or the necessity that his education — the cultivation of his 
flic ul ties, or the development of his intelligence — must be in 
harmony with itself, and therefore must be an entirely differ- 
ent thing from"\he education of the Caucasian. The term 
education, in regard to our own race, has widely different sig- 
nifications. It may be the mere development of the mind, or 
it may mean, with the cultivation of the intellect, the forma- 
tion of the character, as Pope says : 

" 'Tis education forms the common mind ; 
Just as the twig is bent, the tree 's inclined." 

But without restricting the term to the former limit — the 
development of the intelligence — it will be found that the edu- 
cation of the negro at the South is in entire harmony with his 
wants, the character of his mind, the necessities of his mentai 
organism ; and that they are the best educated negro popula- 
tion ever known in human experience. 

Common sense and experience teach us to educate all crea- 
tures committed to our charge in accordance with their wants. 
No one would presume to teach a horse as he would a dog, or 
any other animal. We have our schools for girls as well as for 
boys, and the education varies continually as the child changes 
into youth, adolescence, and finally into manhood. The nature 
and condition of the pupil are the great central facts — whether 



216 EDUCATION OF NEGEOES. 

a horse or a dog, a boy or a girl, a youth or a man, a negro or 
a Caucasian ; the education must, if natural and proper, always 
hinge on this central feet. The negro brain and mental charac- 
ter, as has been shown, differs from our own both in degree 
and in quality, in the extent of its powers, and the form or 
modes of mental action. As still more strikingly manifest 
among animals, the negro child has more intelligence than the 
white of the same age. This is in harmony with the great 
fundamental law which renders the most perfectly organized 
beings most dependent on reason — in the parents, if not that of 
the offspring. The calf or pig of a month has more intelligence 
than the child of that age ; the negro child has more than that 
of the Caucasian, but the character of this intelligence, of 
course, varies in each and every case. In the lower animals it 
is instinct ; in the case of the negro child it is more than in- 
stinct, but it is also radically different from that nascent ration- 
ality peculiar to the white child. Nevertheless, it is intelli- 
gence, and, as observed, more active in the negro child than in 
that of the white of the same age — an intelligence which en- 
ables it to preserve life where the former would, perhaps, 
perish, and thus to preserve the race amid the exigencies of 
savagism and the absence of care and forethought in the 
parents. It is this smartness of the negro child that has often 
deceived and deluded those perverse and deluded people of 
our own race, who get up negro schools. They see, or rather 
think they see, in this smartness the proof of their theories in 
regard to negroes, and parade their pets to admiring visitors 
with the utmost confidence in the justice and humanity of their 
exertions in behalf of an " oppressed and down-trodden race." 
But a few years more of these negro pupils would be sufficient 
(if any thing could be) to open the eyes of these perverted 
people, who, shutting their eyes and closing their ears to the 
ignorance and miseries of their own race, waste their money 



EDUCATION OF NEGROES. 217 

and time on a different one ; indeed worse than waste, for they 
inflict much evil on the mistaken objects of their labors, evils 
though perhaps not traceable, that must necessarily attend 
every one of these negro pupils thus forced into a development 
opposed to the laws of their organism, and in contradiction to 
the negro nature. 

The cultivation and development of the mental faculties, the 
mode or modes of education, are instinctive with our race, 
though constantly improved and perfected by reason resting on 
experience. The Greeks, Egyptians, and other ancient nations 
practiced substantially the system now common to modern 
times — that is, they taught their children by abstract lessons 
as well as oral instruction. They studied arithmetic, or the 
science of numbers, grammar, history, etc., under the direction 
of parents or guardians, as well as listened to lectures on 
rhetoric and philosophy in the " groves of the academy." His- 
tory and biography were the legends and traditions of gods 
and goddesses, it is true, but modern history is mainly that 
of kings and queens, and as the former were once human, the 
only substantial difference consists in the greater accuracy of 
the latter. 

The Mongol mind has its specific tendencies in this respect ; 
that is, children are taught, not by abstract lessons, but by 
material emblems which represent their ideas. They have no 
history, in our sense of the term. It is utterly impossible that 
the Mongol mind can trace back events beyond a certain num- 
ber of generations, and the crude and contradictory mass of 
nonsense which passes for Chinese history or the " Annals of 
China," is the work of Caucasian Tartars or those of predom- 
inating Caucasian innervation. 

The negro has never taken one step towards mental devel- 
opment, as we understand it. He has never invented an alpha- 
bet — that primal starting-point in mental cultivation — he has 

10 



218 EDUCATION OF NEGROES. 

never comprehended even the simplest numerals — in short, has 
had no instruction and can give no instruction except that 
which is verbal and imitated, which the child copies from the 
parents, which is limited to the existing generation, and there- 
fore the present generation are in the same condition that their 
progenitors occupied thousands of years ago. But the Al- 
mighty has adapted him to a very different condition from 
this fixed and non-progressive savagism. All the subordinate 
races have a certain capacity for imitating the higher habitudes 
of the Caucasian, unless it be the Mongol, which, perhaps, 
does not possess this faculty. The English have been mas- 
ters in Hindostan for more than a century — their power" rests 
on the same tenure of force on which it was founded-— they 
have made no impression whatever on the habitudes of the 
Hindostanee — their language, their schools, their religion, their 
mental habits, are untouched, and it may be doubted if God 
ever designed that they should be in juxtaposition or made 
subject to a superior race. 

In regard to the negro, there can be no doubt, not merely 
because, by himself, he is a non-producing and non-advancing 
savage, but because his entire structure, mental and physical, 
is adapted to juxtaposition. All the other races have a certain 
specific character to overcome first, or to be understood and 
properly harmonized, but the negro is a blank, a wilderness, a 
barren waste, waiting for the husbandman or the Caucasian 
teacher to develop his real worth, and gifted with his wonder 
ful imitative powers, he not only never resists, but reaching 
forth his hands for guidance and protection, at once accepts 
his teacher, and submits himself to his control. Of the four 
millions now in our midst, a considerable proportion are the 
children of native Africans, indeed, there are not a few natives 
still among us, and yet everything connected with Africa — 
their traditions, language, religion, even their names have 



EDUCATION OF NEGROES. 219 

wholly disappeared. The Normans conquered the Saxons 
eight centuries ago, but the Saxon names, and even their lan- 
guage, are now as entirely Saxon as if a Norman had never 
landed on the shores of England. This blank, this feeble men- 
tal capacity and readiness of the negro nature to imitate the 
habits, bodily or mental, of the superior race, adapts the negro 
to his subordinate social position, and the purposes to which 
Providence has assigned him. The child-like intellect does not 
resist the strong and enduring mental energies of the Cauca- 
sian — its first impressions pass away in a few years, while its 
imitative capacities sit so gracefully on the negro nature that 
multitudes of ignorant people confound the real with the bor- 
rowed, and actually suppose that the " smart" negroes to be 
met with occasionally at the North are examples of native 
capacity. Of course, the borrowed intelligence is equally 
short-lived, and were our negroes carried back to Africa, they 
would lose what they had acquired here with the same rapid- 
ity that they have parted with their original Africanism, and 
names among them now celebrated would be as utterly lost a 
hundred years hence as their African names have disappeared 
here. These things being so, it obviously follows that negro 
" education" must be oral and verbal, or, in other words, that 
the negro should be placed in the best position possible for the 
development of his imitative powers — to call into action that 
peculiar capacity for copying the habits, mental and moral, of 
the superior Caucasian. It may be said that all mental instruc- 
tion is through the imitative capacity, or that our own chil- 
dren are thus educated, but the negro mind, in essential re- 
spects, is always that of a child. The intelligence's observed, is 
more rapidly developed in the negro child — those faculties more 
immediately connected with sensation, perception, and perhaps 
memory, are more energetic, but when they reach twelve and 
fifteen they diverge, the reflective faculties in the white are 



220 EDUCATION OF NEGROES. 

now called into action, the real Caucasian character now opens, 
the mental forces are fairly evolved, while the negro remains 
stationary — a perpetual child. The negro of forty or fifty has 
more experience or knowledge, perhaps, aS the white man of 
that age has a more extended knowledge than the man of 
twenty-five, but the intellectual calibre — the actual mental 
capacity in the former case is no greater than it was at fifteen, 
when its utmost limits were reached — its entire power in full 
development. 

The universal experience which, in this as many other in- 
stances, usually rests upon truth, leads the people of the South 
to designate the negro of any age as a " boy" — an expression 
perfectly correct, in an intellectual sense, as the negro reaches 
his mental maturity at twelve or fifteen, and viewed from our 
stand-point, is, therefore, always a boy. Indeed, this psycho- 
logical fact, together with his imitative instinct, constitutes the 
specific character of the race, and present the landmarks neces- 
sary for our guidance when dealing with the mental and moral 
wants of the negro. Intellectually considered, he is always a 
boy — a perpetual child — needing the care and guidance of his 
master, and his instinctive tendencies to imitate him, therefore, 
demand that, as in the case of children, the master should 
present him a proper example. His mental wants, it is be- 
lieved, are provided for, and his capabilities in these respects 
fully developed at the South. They are in pretty extensive 
intercourse with the white people ; even on the large planta- 
tions they have the master's family or that of the overseer to 
copy after and to guide them, and though it may be that 
something more is needed, that a better mental training is pos- 
sible in the future, it is, at all events, certain that this verbal 
instruction is better adapted to their wants than the schools 
and colleges of a different and vastly superior race. If any 
one should propose to teach children of five the branches 



EDUCATION OF NE6BOES. 221 

proper to those of ten and twelve years of age, or the latter 
those that occupy young men in the universities, it would be 
seen at a glance that this teaching was unnatural and improper. 
And our every-day experience will show that it is injurious, 
not alone to the mental, but to the bodily health of the pupil. 
The same or similar results must attend the school education 
of negroes. It is, perhaps, difficult to trace the consequences 
of negro education at the North. There are but few negroes, 
and the mulattoes and mongrels who pass for such must pay a 
penalty for this education according, doubtless, to their pro- 
portion of negro blood. 

The mongrels, and possibly some negroes at the North, often 
seem as well educated as white men, but it must be at the ex- 
pense of the body, shortening the existence, just as we some- 
times witness in the case of children when the pride, vanity, or 
ignorance of parents have stimulated their minds, and dwarfed 
or destroyed their bodies. An " educated" negro, like a " free 
negro," is a social monstrosity, even more unnatural and 
repulsive than the latter. 

It is creditable to the people of the South that no such out- 
rage on nature and common sense is found in all her borders. 
God has made the negro an inferior being, not in most cases, 
but all cases, for there are no accidents or exceptions in His 
works. There never could be such a thing as a negro equal- 
ing the standard Caucasian in natural ability. The same 
Almighty Creator has also made all white men equal — for 
idiots, insane people, etc., are not exceptions, they are results 
of human vices, crimes, or ignorance, immediate or remote. 
What a false and vicious state of society, therefore, when 
human institutions violate this eternal order, and by withhold- 
ing education from their own brethren, educate the inferior 
negro, and in a sense make him superior to white men, by set- 
ting aside the law of God ! 



222 EDUCATION OF NEGROES. 

Some of the States have passed laws against teaching negroes 
to read ; a more extended and enlightened knowledge of the 
negro will, doubtless, some day govern this matter through 
public opinion, and without governmental interference. The 
negro learns from his master all he needs to know, all that he 
can know, in a proper sense, all that is essential to the perform- 
ance of his duties, or necessary to his happiness and the fulfil- 
ment of the purposes to which nature lias adapted him; and 
though there might, perhaps, be no good reason given why he 
should be prohibited from learning to read, it is sufficient to 
say that it is absurd, as well as a waste of time that should be 
carefully employed. His mental powers are unable to grapple 
with science or philosophy, or abstractions of any kind, and it 
would be folly to suppose that he would be or could be inter- 
ested in history or biography, in which his race, his instincts, 
his wants have no share, record, or connection whatever. 

All this applies, of course, to the South — to negroes in their 
normal condition and natural relation to the superior race. 
It may be well enough at the North, as long as they have 
mongrels and free negroes, to provide schools for them, as 
they have no other guide or protector but the State itself, but 
though they thus acquire a certain kind of mental activity, as 
observed, it is at the expense of the vital forces, and another 
of those incidental causes that tend to the final extinction of 
this abnormal element. It is, however, a disgrace, and, to a 
certain extent, a crime in any State to educate negroes or 
mongrels, so long as they have one single uneducated white 
man within their limits. The proof of this is seen every day 
in the fact, that however educated, or whatever the seeming 
mental superiority of the " colored" man, the uneducated 
white man tolerates no equality. Thus nature vindicates her 
rights, and whatever the ignorance, delusion, or crimes of 
society, the eternal order fixed by the hand of God is inevi- 
table and everlasting. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 

The instinct of paternity — the love and care of offspring— is 
common to all creatures, animal and human, and is indeed 
necessary to the preservation of their existence. The animal 
frequently exhibits it more decidedly than the human creature, 
and however unseemly it may be, we, even our own supremely 
endowed race, may take a lesson from it. The animal instinct, 
however, is limited to the mere preservation of the life of its 
offspring, and the latter, when a certain development is 
reached, no longer needs it, for its own instinct then guides it 
to preserve itself. 

The love, and care, and guidance of the Caucasian mother 
for her child is both a profound instinct and a lofty sentiment, 
and indeed calls into action the highest capabilities of her 
nature, her profoundest intelligence as well as the most exalted 
and self-sacrificing affection. It begins with the .birth and 
ends only with the death, for though it is constantly modified 
by time and changes in the development of her offspring, it 
accompanies the latter through life, and disappears only at the 
portals of the grave. 

God has endowed the parents with the highest intelligence, 
and laid on them the command or the duty of caring for their 
offspring— not the mere bodily preservation, as in the case of 
the animal, but the education, the guidance and develop- 
ment of the faculties, the moral capabilities as well as the intel- 
lectual powers of their children. He, therefore, has endowed 



224 THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 

them with affections of corresponding breadth and strength, 
and adapted them to these duties, and, moreover, rewards them 
with corresponding enjoyment or happiness in the affections 
and love of their offspring. These duties are too often imper- 
fectly performed, indeed often misunderstood. They are some- 
times delegated to others, sometimes carelessly fulfilled, and 
often disregarded altogether. They should never be delegated 
to others unless the loss of health or some imperative cause 
exists. The mother should always nurse her own child — if 
able to do so — and the parents should always educate their 
own children. In the main, this is done in our American soci- 
ety, for though children go to the public schools, the impress 
of the character is generally made at home. The child arriv- 
ing at adult age, and no longer needing the care and guidance 
of the parents, marries and leaves home, but the affection of 
the parents, especially that of the mother, accompanies it 
through life, and not unfrequently, after a separation of forty 
years, it is found to be as strong and fresh as in the days of 
childhood. The large brain of the Caucasian mother, or her 
large intellectual nature, as has been said, is associated with 
corresponding capabilities of affection. The interests of life, 
the social welfare, the progress of civilization — in short, abso- 
lute social necessities, demand this, for were it otherwise, were 
the affections limited to the infancy of the offspring, society, 
as it now exists, or indeed anything at all resembling it, would 
obviously be impossible. 

The interest of parents in their children, years after they 
have left home— their grandchildren, etc., though separated 
thousands of miles — their letters to them, their visits to the 
old homestead, and the ten thousand other nameless things 
that bind together those of the same blood, constitute a large 
portion of our social existence, and is indeed an essential part 
of our civilization. And all of this is dependent on the affec- 



THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS, 225 

tions and in harmony with the elevated intellectualism of the 
race, the breadth and strength of the former corresponding, 
of course, with the mental endowments and specific capabil- 
ities of the Caucasian. 

The negro, of course, is endowed with affections, approxima- 
ting in some respects, indeed in many respects, to those of our 
own race, but there are some things, some qualities in his 
emotional nature utterly different, and then again some things 
specific with us totally absent in the negro. The mother has 
a similar love for her offspring at an early period in its exist- 
ence, possibly stronger, or rather more inrperatively instinc- 
tive, than that of the white woman. Instances are not unfre- 
quent among the lower classes in England, and other European 
countries, where mothers destroy their offspring, and pain- 
ful as it is to acknowledge it, the same thing sometimes 
happens at the North ; but though an instance of the kind is 
possible, there have been so few among negroes at the South 
as to warrant us in saying that not one person in a thousand 
has ever heard of such a thing. It is true, the negro is in a 
normal condition, and the European peasant is, to a certain 
extent, in an abnormal one, and vice and crime, and consequent 
misery, are always in exact proportion to the extent of the 
latter in all races. Nevertheless, it is quite certain that, both 
living under equally favorable circumstances, the negress is less 
likely to destroy the life of her offspring than is the white 
woman. Her maternal instincts are more imperative, more 
closely approximate to the animal, while that sense of degra- 
dation which the higher nature and more elevated sensibilities 
of the white woman prompts to the hiding of her shame by 
the destruction of her offspring, is entirely absent in the negress. 
She may possibly destroy her child in a paroxysm of rage, but 
here nature has guarded her too strongly by the imperative ma- 
ternal instinct, while those ten thousand chances in our higher 

10* 



226 THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 

habitudes and social complications which may involve the most 
exquisite suffering of the unhappy mother, and impel her, by 
one terrible and supreme crime, to destroy her own offspring, 
can never happen or influence the negro mother. 

A few years since a " slave" woman escaping from Kentucky 
to Ohio was recognized and taken back to her home, but on 
the way down the river cut the throat of her child, whom she 
had carried off in her flight. The Abolitionists, of course, 
admired and praised this bloody deed, and declared that, rather 
than her child should live a slave, she, with Roman sternness 
and French exaltation, herself destroyed its life. If they had 
said that the mother had killed her child because it was not 
permitted to have a white skin, or straight hair, or to have any 
other specialty of white people, it would have been quite as 
rational and as near the truth as to say that she killed it be- 
cause it was not to grow up with the freedom of the white 
man. The woman was doubtless a mulatto or mongrel, who 
in revenge possibly for the supposed wrong, inflicted this pun- 
ishment on those whom she had been taught to believe had 
wronged her. But while this unnatural crime was quite pos- 
sible, as indeed any unnatural vice or crime is always possible 
to the mixed element, it is scarcely possible to the negress, 
whose imperative maternal instinct, as has been observed, 
shields her from such atrocity. The negro mother has always 
control and direction of her offspring at the South so long as 
that is needed by the latter. The master, of course, is the 
supreme ruler — the guide, director, the common father, the 
very providence of these simple and subordinate people, but 
while his is the directing power that sees to all their wants, 
and protects them in all their rights, the relations of mother 
and child are rarely interfered with, for both the interests of the 
master and the happiness of the mother demand that she 
should have the care and enjoy the affection of her own off- 



THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 227 

spring. This, however, is confined to a limited sphere when 
contrasted with the instinctive habitudes and enlarged intellec- 
tualism of our own race. The negro child, in some respects, 
at the same age, is more intelligent than the white child. This 
same fact is manifested by our domestic animals. The dog or 
calf of six months is vastly less dependent on the mother than 
the human creature. The negro child, with its vastly greater 
approximation to the animal, is also less dependent at a cer- 
tain age than the white child. As frequently stated in this 
work, the negro has absolutely nothing in common with ani- 
mals that our own race has not. 

There is an impassable chasm, wide as it is deep and ever- 
lasting, between the human and animal creation. But while 
the negro has nothing whatever in common with animals that 
we ourselves have not, in all those things or qualities in a sense 
common to both men and animals, the negro has a vastly larger 
approximation to the latter. As the intelligence or the capac- 
ity of providing for itself, therefore, is more rapidly developed 
in the animal, so, too, in the case of the negro child, at a cer- 
tain age it is less dependent on the care and affection of the 
mother than is that of white people. Those ignorant and per- 
verse persons who stifle the impulses and sympathies with which 
God has endowed them for their kind, and engage in teach- 
ing, as they suppose, negro children, have been so impressed 
by this fact, that in their utter ignorance of the negro nature, 
they have inferred that the latter was really the superior race ; 
they have often found a negro boy or girl of ten years, for 
example, whose perceptions, memory, etc., seemed to them, 
and, doubtless, sometimes were, more clear, prompt, and de- 
cided, than those of white children of the same age, and there- 
fore they were quite convinced of the superiority of the negro 
and of the sublimity and immensity of their own labors in thus 



228 THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 

helping on the intellectual development of a wronged and 
down-trodden but really superior race. 

But if they could have followed out the future of these 
children for a few years, and were persons of sufficient under- 
derstanding to analyze facts at all, they would have made a 
still more startling discovery than that of the fancied superi- 
ority of the negro. The negro mind reaches its maturity, its com- 
plete development, at from twelve to fifteen years, and though 
there may be vastly more knowledge or experience, the negro 
of fifty has no more actual mental capacity than he had at fif- 
teen. The faculties directly dependent on the senses are act- 
ively and rapidly developed in the negro child, but the reflect- 
ive faculties, the faculties in regard to which the senses are 
mere avenues through which external influences are conveyed 
to the brain, are absent, of course, in the negro, for there is an 
absence of brain itself, and therefore it is just as absurd to im- 
agine him possessing them as to suppose the sense of sight in 
any creature without eyes or without an organism for that fac- 
ulty. The white boy, on the contrary, only begins at this age 
to manifest the reflective faculties, which, constantly expand- 
ing, doubtless reach their maturity from twenty to twenty-five. 
Of course the mind may continue to expand in a sense for 
many years, for a life-time, but the actual mental capabilities, 
like those of the body, doubtless reach their normal standard 
from twenty to twenty-five. Thus, a white boy and negro of 
ten, with the faculties directly dependent on the senses possi- 
bly most active in the latter, begin a year or two later to di- 
verge from each other. The negro at fifteen, with scarcely 
perceptible reflective faculties, remains stationary, while the 
Caucasian, with constantly increasing powers, with imagina- 
tion, comparison, and reflection, superadded to the mere per- 
ceptive faculties, requires several years more for the develop- 
ment of his complete intellectual nature. It is not merely that 



THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 229 

the negro mind becomes stationary at twelve to fifteen, for to 
them it is complete development, but if we can suppose a 
white boy of twelve to fourteen remaining thus — mentally 
considered — through life, then we can form a pretty accurate 
conception of the mental differences between white men and 
negroes, for the latter are intellectually boys for ever. This is a 
common and familiar expression at the South, which originates 
in the nature and necessities of things, and the term boy ex- 
presses the intellectual existence of the negro as truthfully as 
the term man expresses the physical condition of the white 
man. 

The affections harmonize, of course, with the mental nature, 
and the love of the negro mother corresponds with the wants 
of the offspring. She has a boundless affection for her infant ; 
it grows feebler as the capacities of the child are developed ; at 
twelve to fifteen she is relatively indifferent to it ; at forty she 
scarcely recognizes it ; and all of these phases in the maternal 
instinct or domestic affections of the race are in accord with 
its specific nature and the purposes assigned it by the Almighty 
Creator. Without the enlarged brain and reasoning power of 
the white mother, nature has made amends to the negress, and 
provided for the wants of her offspring by giving her a more 
imperative maternal instinct, that shall insure its safety and 
welfare. When the negro reaches maturity, at twelve to fif- 
teen, nature has accomplished her purposes. The offspring no 
longer needs her care, and the mother becomes indifferent to 
it, and it cares little for the mother. A few years later, and 
she forgets it altogether, for her affections corresponding with 
her intellectual nature, there is no basis, or material, or space 
for such things. Of course, living in juxtaposition with the 
superior race, and the imitative faculty of the negro constantly 
brought into action, there is a seeming resemblance to white 
people in these respects. But one only needs to remember the 



230 THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 

mental qualities of the negro — the small and widely different 
brain, and consequently feeble, and, as compared with us, lim- 
ited sphere of intellectualism, to see the absurdity of endow- 
ing the negro with domestic affections corresponding with 
ours. At twelve to fifteen, as has been said, the purposes of 
nature are accomplished. The offspring no longer needs the 
care of the mother — the affections with which nature endowed 
her are no longer needed. Why should they exist, then ? 
Isolated in Africa, they perhaps rarely feel any interest in their 
offspring after the latter reach maturity, and, separated a few 
years, would not know them, would have no recollection of 
them, for there is no civilization, no social development, nothing 
whatever of that which we call society, and in which with us 
the domestic affections— the family relationship — the love of 
mother, wife, sisters, brothers, and offspring constitute so large 
and essential a part. The limited intelligence of the negro, the 
small brain and feeble (scarcely perceptible) reasoning facul- 
ties, it will be evident to the reader, must be accompanied by 
corresponding domestic affections and an emotional nature that 
accords with this limited intellectualism. And this is mani- 
fested in the habits, wants, and condition of the negro at the 
South, in his feeble and capricious love for his wife and indif- 
ference to his offspring, redeemed only in the potent and in- 
stinctive affection of the mother in its earlier years for her 
child. The strongest affection the negro nature is capable of 
feeling is love of his master, his guide, protector, friend, and 
indeed Providence, who takes care of him in sickness and 
shelters and provides for him in old age and helplessness. God 
has adapted all His creatures for the wisest and most benefi- 
cent purposes, has endowed the negro with affections harmon- 
izing with his wants, has given the negro mother imperative 
maternal instincts that shall secure the safety and welfare of 
her offspring, but little more, for little more is needed; for 



THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 231 

society or civilization neither does nor can belong to negro 
existence, while affection for his master, love and devotion to 
him who protects and provides for him through life, is both a 
necessity and an enjoyment, and therefore God has made it the 
strongest and most enduring feeling of the negro nature. Of 
the four or five millions in our midst, great numbers are the 
children or grand-children of African parents, a few even are 
of African birth, but probably not one has any distinct memory, 
recollection, or tradition of their forefathers* — not one that 
cherishes any past family sentiment or affection of any kind 
whatever, indeed not one that even preserves an African name ! 
We trace back not alone the general but the family histories, 
the loves and affections, the hopes and fears, and sacrifices and 
sufferings of our pilgrim forefathers of two or three centuries 
ago, because all this accords with the large brain and ex- 
panded intellectualism, and the corresponding strength and 
breadth of the affections, which may be said to be the motive 
forces which impel the whole social phenomena in question. 
But the negro neither has nor can have any thing in common 
with this. He has no capacities of the kind, no civilization or 
social development, and therefore no wants of the kind, no 
affections even resembling our own, though at the same time 
God has endowed him with all that is necessary to his happi- 
piness and to the mutual welfare of both races when in 
juxtaposition. 

The affection of the mother for her child, and the husband 
for the wife, though widely different from that which we wit- 
ness in our own race, is abundantly sufficient for the purposes 
that nature has in view, and with the accomplishment of these 

* These facts, and some others mentioned in this chapter, were referred to 
in a previous one, but they need to be repeated in this connection to fix them 
fully on the mind of the reader, as well as to explain the subject here under 
discussion. 



232 THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. 

purposes they subside. The affection for the master, which is 
necessary to their welfare through life, remains — the sole en- 
during affection of the negro nature, as it is obviously the sole 
permanent want of the negro existence. The laws and legisla- 
tion of the Southern States generally accord with these facts 
of the negro nature, for though those who have made these 
laws were unable to explain them even to themselves, their 
every-day exjDerience and practical knowledge of the negro 
enable them to legislate for the wants and welfare of these 
people as well and justly as for themselves. Probably all, or 
nearly all of the States forbid the separation of the mother and 
child, so long as the maternal instinct remains, or her care of 
her offspring is needed by the latter ; and even if there be no 
law of this kind on the statute-book of some States, it is in the 
hearts and instincts of the dominant race, and is equally potent 
in the form of public sentiment to prevent such an outrage on 
nature as the forced separation of mother and child. 

There are, doubtless, instances where wrong is done at the 
South, as well as elsewhere, to the subordinate negro as well 
as to our own kind, but with the same political and social sys- 
tem as that of the North, and with vastly more political intelli- 
gence and faithfulness to the principles of that system, it is only 
reasonable to conclude that, in regard to the negro element, the 
same enlightened spirit of justice and fair dealing generally 
pervades Southern society. And when it is remembered that 
the social adaptation is in harmony with the natural relations 
of the races, and not only that there is no social conflict, but, 
on the contrary, that it is the utmost interest of the master to 
treat his negroes kindly, then whatever the temporary excep- 
tions, the general result must be in favor of the happiness and 
welfare of these people. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

MARRIAGE. 

Nothing, perhaps, is so repugnant to the northern mind as 
the notion that marriage does not exist among the " slaves" of 
the South, and the Abolition lecturers have given this subject 
the most prominent place in their terrible bill of indictment 
against their southern brethren. The spectacle, or the seeming 
spectacle, of four millions of human beings living without mar- 
riage, without family, without children, with nothing but off- 
spring, shut out, like the brutes that perish, from all the house- 
hold charities, and doomed to live in universal concubinage, as 
it has been termed, was, to the northern and European mind, 
such a stupendous outrage on " humanity," that we need not 
wonder at their fierce indignation, or at the wild and unsparing 
denunciation heaped upon the authors of such boundless and 
unparalleled iniquity. Especially were northern women shocked 
and indignant, and above all others, the women of New Eng- 
land were excited at times to a " Divine fury" when contem- 
plating this mighty "wickedness." Our fair countrywomen 
are believed to be equally virtuous and lovely, but the domes- 
tic education of those of New England, in some respects, is 
more admirable than that of others or any other country. 
They are taught to labor, to be their own housekeepers, to 
regard life, and the duties of life, as a solemn mission to be 
faithfully and conscientiously fulfilled, and though it imparts a 
certain materialism bordering on hardness, perhaps, to the New 
England woman, it is associated with such simple and trans- 



234 MAREIA6E. 

parent love of truth, and such an earnest and abiding sense of 
duty, that the harsher features of the character are lost in 
these gentler and more exalted qualities. Hence they are 
taught to regard a violation of the family relation as the one 
most heinous and unpardonable sin. To women thus educated, 
with the utmost abhorrence of any violation of marital obli- 
gations, the seeming universal disregard of this relation, and 
the duties embraced in it, among the " slaves" of the South, 
was probably the most transcendent wrong that the mind 
could conceive of, and the "anti-slavery" delusion of the 
North has doubtless been increased to a considerable extent 
by this strictness or severity of female education. And if the 
facts were what they suppose, then indeed would their indig- 
nation and abhorrence be just enough, but strange that they 
should never have doubted or mistrusted these facts. Many 
of the most intelligent have known their sisters of the South, 
known them to be as virtuous, refined and womanly as them- 
selves, and yet living every day of their lives in the shadow of 
this mighty wrong, and in the midst of this supposititious ini- 
quity. Could that be possible? Could woman retain her 
purity, her womanly delicacy, or expand into the full stature 
of a true womanhood with such surroundings, in an atmos- 
phere thus corrupt and corrupting, in a social condition where 
four millions of people were living without marriage, in open 
and utter disregard of the fundamental principle of morality 
as well as of social order ? No, indeed, it could not be possi- 
ble, and, as remarked, it is strange that the women of the 
North have not had misgivings of this kind, or have not mis- 
trusted the assumed facts of " negro slavery" in this respect. 
But before the actual facts involved are presented to the read- 
er, it is necessary to clearly understand what marriage itself 
is. It may be defined as the pledge of two persons of differ- 
ent sex to live together for life — pledged to each other and to 



MARRIAGE. 235 

society, for the presence of witnesses to a marriage contract 
or a marriage ceremony has simply this meaning, and none 
other. With us marriage is a mere civil or legal contract. It 
is the same in France, and, to a certain extent, in England, but 
in other countries it is combined with religious considerations, 
and the Catholic church makes it a sacrament. This is mar- 
riage, as ordinarily understood, as the necessities of the social 
order compel us to accept and regard it. Nevertheless, every 
one's instincts will assure him that marriage consists in reality 
of vastly more than this description of it. A man and woman 
may pledge themselves to each other and to society — all the 
legal and customary forms may be complete, and yet we know, 
or may know that there is no true marriage, for these parties 
may be entirely indifferent, or even objects of actual dislike to 
each other. The obligations or duty to society may be ful- 
filled, the interests of families provided for, the legal rights of 
the parties themselves properly protected, even the welfare of 
offspring appropriately guarded, nevertheless, if the parties are 
not united by affection, by those mysterious affinities with 
which God Himself has endowed them, and for this precise 
purpose, then there is no true marriage, and, abstractly con- 
sidered, they are as entirely separate as if they stood on differ- 
ent sides of the Atlantic instead of at the altar where the cere- 
mony is being performed. It is clear, therefore, that marriage, 
truly considered, involves vastly more than the mere external 
ceremony or legal formularies, which the universal interest 
demands, however, as an essential accompaniment. " Increase 
and multiply" is an ordinance of nature as well as the com- 
mand of holy writ. All the innumerable tribes of inferior 
beings obey this command with a regularity, order and com- 
pleteness that admit of no exception or interruption. They 
are all governed by instinct, by a wise necessity which impels 
them to fulfill this Divine decree and in modes adapted to their 



236 MARRIAGE. 

specific nature. Birds choose their mates, are faithful to them, 
share together, in some instances, the care and nurture of the 
common offspring, and all other animals of the higher order 
exhibit a tendency to form these temporary uni ?ns. But in 
addition to the natural instinct impelling us, in common with 
all other creatures, to fulfill the universal command to " multi- 
ply and replenish the earth," the Almighty Creator has given 
us reason and endowed us with capacities of affection which 
are designed to guide us in these respects. A youth and 
maiden are thrown into each other's society, an acquaintance, 
an intimacy, a mutual affection and reciprocal love follow. 
They feel themselves united, not merely harmonized, but 
morally consolidated, as it were, into a single being, and they 
mutually pledge each other to be thus as long as they both 
shall live. They are united, not by their pledges to each 
other, their mutual declarations of affection, but by those 
beautiful and mysterious affinities that God has planted in the 
soul itself, and the pledges and promises are the mere outward 
expression of their actual existence. 

It is thus sometimes said that marriages are made in Heaven, 
for there is an eternal fitness, a complete unity or oneness in 
these impalpable agencies which, whatever may be the seem- 
ing incongruities of character in some instances, thus link to- 
gether for ever these human souls as well as persons. Alas ! 
that it should so often be mistaken — that pride and vanity, or 
a groveling and sinful lust, should be imposed on the simple 
and loving heart of Avoman as the counterpart of her own 
glowing and beautiful affection; and the man guilty of this 
frightful sin, this " gallantry," as the corrupt and rotten society 
of Europe designates the desecration of a woman's soul, com- 
mits a crime infinitely more atrocious than murder or the mere 
destruction of the body of his victim. Unfortunately, too, 
accident, imperfect education, circumstances, a thousand things 



MARRIAGE. 237 

may and do lead both parties to mistake each other or them- 
selves, and to rush into marriage only to discover a few months 
later, that they were deluded and deceived, and instead of that 
perfect unity of feeling, of affection, of soul, which they had 
believed in, there were contradictions and repugnances that 
no gentleness of temper or strength of reason or length of 
time could ever change, and therefore in sullen despair they 
settle down into hopeless apathy, or still worse, shock and 
scandalize society by a reckless violation of its laws as well as 
of the personal vows so sacredly pledged at the altar. But 
when the instincts of natural affection have been guided by 
reason and a true perception of the wants and nature of each 
other, and that perfect unity of feeling and of purpose exists 
which flows from this reciprocal adaptation of the parties, 
then there is marriage in its true sense, for then two relatively 
imperfect beings are united into one complete whole. And if 
we could suppose this husband and wife living for themselves 
alone, and isolated from all association with others, then noth- 
ing more would be needed. They were united by affection, 
by adaptation, by true perceptions of each other's wants, by 
those mysterious affinities which we call love, in short, by an 
organic and eternal fitness, and their mutual pledges would be 
abundantly sufficient for themselves. But we are not per- 
mitted to suppose such a thing as isolation or separation from 
others, or from society. Our existence is necessarily complex, 
and our duties relative as well as personal, and therefore, mar- 
riage must be witnessed, and pledges given to society as well 
as made to each other, for the clue fulfilment of the duties in- 
volved. A modern doctrine, if it may be called thus, has been 
set up that people who have mistaken their " affinities," and 
only discovered their true ones after marriage, have a right to 
correct their mistakes and form a new marital union which 
they may suppose essential to their happiness. But they would 



23S MARRIAGE. 

disregard utterly their relations to others, their duties to soci- 
ety, their reciprocal obligations to their fellows, and trample 
on the fundamental principle of social order, indeed, society 
would itself be rendered utterly impossible could such indi- 
vidual caprice and selfishness prevail to any considerable ex- 
tent. All their so-called arguments against the " institution" 
of marriage are, therefore, simply absurd, for while their con- 
ception of an essential portion of it may be correct enough as 
far as it goes, the assumption that the parties are alone respon- 
sible to each other, and are not called on to give pledges to 
society hi the form of a civil contract or legal and indissoluble 
marriage, is founded on a total misconception or total disre- 
gard of their relations to others and of the duties necessarily 
involved. But enough on this point. Marriage is a natural 
relation that springs spontaneously from the necessities of 
human existence, and though a civil contract, it has a deeper 
and holier significance than the mere external ceremony or 
pledge which is thus given to the world as weir as to each 
other. 

Marriage, is of course, a natural relation among negroes as 
well as ourselves, and were it true that these four millions of 
people were living without it, then the denunciations heaped 
upon the people of the South would doubtless be merited. 
But a moment's reflection should be sufficient to convince any 
one, at all events any American, that with a different nature, 
with different faculties, different wants, and different duties of 
these people, there must follow a different form or modification 
of this relation. The negro is substantially a child or unde- 
veloped and undevelopable man, with affections, moral wants 
and faculties approximating, of course, to our own, but yet so 
different that his happiness as well as that of the white man 
demands a corresponding development. The affection of the 
sexes strongly resembles that of our school-children. It is* 



MARRIAGE. 239 

sudden, capricious, superficial, and temporary, and sometimes 
violent, but rarely permanent, or would be rarely permanent 
were it not for the example of the whites, whose habitudes in 
these respects the imitative instincts of the negro impel him 
to copy after. In their native Africa, and without the influ- 
ence and example of the superior race, polygamy is universal, 
the affection of the husband being a mere caprice in most 
cases, they sell their wives and children without compunction, 
but the mother, with that universal maternal instinct common 
to all human creatures, and to animals of the higher classes, 
clings tenaciously to her offspring, while perfectly willing to 
change husbands or owners, as they really are in fact. Many 
of the " rich men" of Africa are only so in the number of their 
wives and children, and they trade and traffic in this property 
as coolly and regularly as if they were legitimate subjects of 
commerce. Nevertheless, the natural law and the natural ten- 
dency of this people is to a single union, and probably a large 
majority of the native Africans have only one wife. There is 
no natural tendency to polygamy in any race, for the numbers 
of the sexes being equal, the natural impulse is to a single 
union. But their feeble and cnpricious affections lead to poly- 
gamy, and their incapacity to purchase or support wives is the 
only limit to the negro practice in these respects. Under the 
teachings and restraints of the superior race at the South, the 
negroes, male and female, are vastly elevated in this regard, as 
well as others above their African habitudes. They form sex- 
ual unions or marry essentially like the whites. The parties 
become intimate, an affection springs up, they ask and receive 
the consent of their masters, and they are married by a white 
clergyman or by a minister of their own people. Thus far, 
marriage among " slaves" is, on the surface at least, an exact 
copy of the marriage of whites. They ask the consent of their 
masters, as white persons ask the consent of their parents or 



240 MARRIAGE. 

guardians, and they are married with the same ceremonies 
either by a minister of their own, or, as very often occurs, 
by a white clergyman. But here they diverge. The negro 
does not and can not constitute a part or portion of that 
mighty fabric we term society. He has no social interests, 
no property to guard or to devise, for though he receives 
and enjoys a larger portion of the proceeds of his labor than 
any mere laborer in Europe, every thing legally belongs 
to the master. There are no family interests for which 
to provide, no reputation or character to protect, no social 
duties to perform, or rights to defend in his case; in short, 
he has no connection whatever with that vast and com- 
plicated machinery which we call society. Marriage, there- 
fore, from our stand-point — that legal formula and social 
pledge so vital to the very existence of social order — is obvi- 
ously absurd and impossible in the case of negroes. The 
natural affinity, the union of affection, the perfect adaptation 
so essential to a true marriage in our race, is substantially imi- 
tated and substantially similar in the case of negroes at the 
South, but to seek to force the negro beyond this — to force 
upon him the social responsibilities that attach to white peo- 
ple ; or, in other words, to make marriage a legal contract in 
the case of negroes, would be as absurd as to force him to 
vote at an election, or to perform any other high social duties, 
and which are evidently impossible. In regard to his own 
wants, the well-being of his offspring, every thing connected 
with the best welfare and highest happiness that his' race is 
capable of, he now enjoys, and any attempt to force him to 
marry as white people marry — that is, to make marriage a 
civil or legal contract — is not merely impossible, but it would 
be a crime and a monstrous outrage upon the nature God has 
given him. The Almighty has endowed the negro with won- 
derful imitative powers : of course, it is impossible for him to 



MAEKIAGE. 241 

imitate all our higher qualities — he can only approximate to 
them — but when the master has presented him with a proper 
example, in this respect as well as in other respects, as parents 
and guardians are expected to do in the case of children, they 
have fulfilled their duties to these " slaves," and generally the 
negro is restrained and governed by these examples. But the 
feeble and capricious affections of the negro give their masters 
much annoyance, and perhaps the greatest trouble they expe- 
rience with these people is their faithlessness to their marital 
obligations. The ignorant " anti-slavery" lecturer at the North 
has distressing tales to tell of cruel masters who separate wives 
and husbands, and break up families ; but while such things 
have doubtless happened, it is quite certain that masters have 
interfered a hundred times to keep them together to one 
instance to the contrary, or to sell them apart. Such things 
happen occasionally, when estates are to be settled and prop- 
erty divided ; but the instincts of the whites and the happi- 
ness of the whites are more disturbed by them than the negroes 
themselves. The limited intellectual power — the feeble moral 
nature, and superficial and capricious affections of the negro 
lead him to regard these separations of wives and husbands — 
of parents and children, with indifference, or rather we should 
say he has none of our perceptions or our instincts in respect 
to these family relations, and therefore when they do happen 
he is relatively or comparatively unconscious of suffering. In 
his native Africa he sells his wife and children without hesita- 
tion, and all the suffering he now feels is borrowed or imita- 
ted from the whites — a feeling scarcely perceptible in his native 
state, but in his better and higher life at the South, it is doubt- 
less exalted into something like a sentiment of family. Never- 
theless, he readily adapts himself to whatever changes the 
chances of life may bring him, and where the white husband, 
and certainly the white wife, might despair and die, the negro 

11 



242 MARRIAGE. 

and the negress, with new partners and another marriage, are 
quite as happy as if they had never been separated from their 
former ones. 

But these things are exceptional, and husbands and wives 
are doubtless far less frequently forced apart by these accidents 
of society than are the wives and husbands of the " lower 
orders" in England by the pressure of want and that necessity 
of self-preservation which so often rends them asunder. The 
real trouble, however, as has been said, is in the negro himself 
—his feeble and capricious affections — substantially similar to 
those of white childhood, and which it requires the constant su- 
pervision and influence of the master to restrain so as to keep 
them faithful to each other. The limited mental endowment 
and the feeble moral perceptions of the negro render him in- 
capable, in these respects, of little beyond the fulfilment of the 
universal command to " increase and multiply." White hus- 
bands and wives, when one dies in early life, often remain 
unmarried, faithful to a memory forever ; and still more fre- 
quently, perhaps, the affections that bound them together in 
their youth remain bright and untarnished in age and to the 
borders of the grave. Such a thing never happened with a 
negro. Not one of the countless millions that have lived upon 
the earth was ever kept from marrying a second time by a 
sentiment or a memory. With their limited moral endowment 
such a thing is an absolute moral impossibility. They live 
with each other to extreme old age, because they imitate the 
superior race, and because it has become a habit, perhaps, but 
the grand purposes of nature accomplished, there is little or 
nothing more, or of those blessed memories of joy and suffer- 
ing — of early hope and chastened sorrows, which so bind and 
blend together the white husband and wife, and often render 
them quite as necessary to each other's happiness as in the 
flush and vigor of youth. Affection for his master is, in fact. 



MAEEIAGE. 243 

the strongest, and it may be said to be the only enduring affec- 
tion of the negro nature, for it remains an ever-present feeling 
long after the feeble and capricious " family sentiment," or 
love of wife and offspring, is entirely obliterated from his 
memory. Marriage of " Southern slaves" thus briefly pre- 
sented, will be seen to be as real, decent, orderly, and natural, 
as the nature of the negro admits of, or relatively speaking, as 
the Almighty Creator himself has designed or decreed. He 
has endowed the negro with different and vastly subordinate 
moral wants and affections, but at the same time given him an 
imitative capacity that enables him to copy the higher nature 
and more exalted habitudes of the superior race. They there- 
fore marry as white people marry, with the same forms and the 
same ceremonies, and such a thing as polygamy, or what the 
"Abolitionist" calls concubinage, is utterly unknown among 
these people. They are no portion or part of society, have no 
place in the social compact, they are unable to fulfil its duties, 
and therefore have none of its rights, hence legal marriage is 
obviously absurd and impossible. To the ignorant Abolition 
writer it may seem quite plain that marriage should be a civil 
contract with negroes as well as white people, for his theory 
that the negro is a Mack Caucasian, neutralizes all difficulties in 
this as in other things. But even they must see that to force 
them on the same social level in this vital respect must neces- 
sarily involve social equality in all other respects — a result, un- 
less their theory be sound, obviously unnatural, monstrous, and 
wicked. The negro, isolated in his native Africa, is at this 
moment exactly what he was four thousand years ago, selling 
his wives and offspring with as utter disregard of marital re- 
lations, and unconsciousness of a family sentiment, as in the 
time of the Pharaohs ; and when we contrast these things — 
the universal polygamy, the trade in wives, the caprice and 
savagism of the lawless husband or master with the decent and 



244 MARRIAGE. 

Christian marriage of " Southern slaves," imitated from the 
superior race, and generally restrained by its example, may we 
not say with entire reverence and truth, that marriage, as it 
now actually exists among these people at the South, being all 
that their natures are capable of, and all that their wants and 
their highest happiness demand, is also, and of necessity, all 
that God Himself has decreed or designed in respect to this 
race ? 

There is no other comparison to make, or contrast to pre- 
sent, but that of African savagism ; for that modern product 
of a w r orld-wide delusion, " freedom," or free negroism, as 
shown elsewhere, is a social abnormalism, a diseased condition, 
that necessarily ends in extinction ; and unless it can be proven 
that disease is preferable to health, and death itself a greater 
good than life, no argument or proof drawn from it is legiti- 
mate or allowable. 



CHAPTER XX. 

CLIMATIC AND INDUSTKIAL ADAPTATION. 

The surface of the earth is naturally divided into zones or 
centres of existence. These great centres of creation have 
each their Fauna and Flora, their animal and vegetable life 
peculiar to themselves alone. Geographical writers use these 
terms, and speak of the temperate, frigid, and torrid zones, 
etc., as mere designations of certain portions of the earth 
where the climate is widely varied ; but this is very subordi- 
nate to the real differences that separate the great centres of 
organic life. All creatures, indeed all organic and living things, 
have their centres of existence, their local habitations, their 
places in the mighty programme of creation. They are all 
adapted to these great centres of life — their organic structure, 
their faculties, and the purposes they were designed to fulfil, 
all harmonizing with their localities, the positions the Almighty 
has assigned to them. There are approximating forms of life, 
certain genera among animals and plants, that may be said to 
belong to the same family or group, but which are found in 
different zones or centres of existence, but there is no such 
thing as the same species being found in more than one centre 
of creation. All the animals and plants of Europe are, there- 
fore, different from those of America, as all the creatures that 
belong to the northern region of this continent are specifically 
different from those of the tropics. 

Each and every specific creation is different from every other 
specific existence, and differs just as widely in the circumstances 



246 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTKIAL ADAPTATION. 

that surround it, and to which it is adapted, as it does in its 
own organic structure. If an animal, for example, it has a 
special structure with special instincts, qualities, etc., and the 
external circumstances, the climate, the vegetation, all things 
are in perfect harmony. This law may be said to be universal, 
for the few seeming exceptions scarcely deserve notice. There 
are a few plants and cereals suited to all climates. The potato, 
of American origin, is cultivated with equal success in Europe, 
while most of our ordinary vegetables are of European origin. 
Wheat grows with equal luxuriance in the Valley of the Nile, 
the table lands of Mexico, and the great Northwest. But 
while all of these things, and many more, are thus capable of 
successful cultivation in different localities from those in which 
they were originally created, the external conditions must be 
preserved — the same or similar soil, and, to a certain extent, 
the same climate or the same heat and moisture are essential 
in their cultivation. This is also generally true of animals. 
Our domestic animals are all suited to different climates. The 
horse, dog, ox, sheep, etc., are of European origin — some of 
them Asiatic — and they live and multiply with equal certainty 
under the fervid suns of the tropics, or amid the icy blasts of 
the extreme North. They are striking exceptions, however, 
to the general law which adapts » all creatures to their own 
centres of existence, and, it would seem, were designed by the 
Almighty and beneficent Creator for the especial purpose of 
benefiting man. They have accompanied him in all his wander- 
ings, especially the dog and horse, shared his fortunes, aided in 
fighting his battles, and however subordinate, played an im- 
portant role in the civilization of mankind. They are closely 
associated in this capacity for resisting external circumstances 
with man himself, that is, the Caucasian, or master man, who, 
as regards mere climate, is capable of living and of enjoying 
the healthy development of all his faculties in all climates alike, 



CLIMATIC A.ND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 247 

unless, perhaps, the polar regions, or extreme North. As a 
general law, all creatures, as they ascend in the scale of being, 
become less and less subject to external influences ; but some 
of our domestic animals are certainly exceptions, for the dog 
and horse, at all events, are capable of living where the negro, 
and possibly the Mongol, would surely become extinct. The 
same general laws of climate affect the human races, not exactly 
similarly, of course, but approximatively as they do animals, 
and with a certain modification, as they do plants — that is, 
they have all centres of existence to which they are specifically 
adapted, with the sole exception of the Caucasian, as some of 
our domestic animals, and indeed some vegetable existences 
are exceptions. The white man, as has been said, can exist 
everywhere, where life of any kind is possible, except the ex- 
treme North, and even here, as shown by Kane and other 
explorers in those bleak and barren regions, by proper precau- 
tions, or by complying with certain conditions, life is possible 
for certain periods. He is, doubtless, designed for the temper- 
ate latitudes, industrially considered, but, as regards climate, 
he is at home everywhere. Writers, ignorant of the laws of 
climate, and indeed ignorant of the specific character of races, 
have supposed that they become weak, effete, and imbecile in 
tropical latitudes, and this notion is, perhaps, very generally 
entertained by otherwise intelligent people. The population 
found in these regions are negro, Indian, or Malay, intermixed 
often with white blood, and these inferior people are supposed 
to be a result of climate, and to exhibit the natural conse- 
quences of a warm and enervating atmosphere ! The white 
man under the equator, living, or rather attempting to live, the 
life of the negro — to labor under the rays of a vertical sun — 
would rapidly decline and die, for his organic structure could 
not resist the external influences that tend to destroy him. 
The malaria springing from the decomposition of the rank 



248 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

vegetation, which ascends in the early portion and descends to 
the earth in the later portion of the day, would soon poison 
all the springs of life, and fever would close the scene. Any 
attempt at labor in midday would be still more rapidly fatal, 
for the caloric generated by the exertion, without an excretory 
system to relieve it, would end in fatal congestions of the 
vital organs, especially the brain. We constantly witness an 
approximation to this in our Western States and Territories, 
where nearly a generation voluntarily sacrifice themselves in 
the effort of preparing comfortable homes for their offspring. 
But after a certain progress is made, the causes of disease sub- 
side, and the temperate climate enables them to labor at all 

times. 

But while the white man is forever forbidden by the laws 
of his physical nature to labor, or by his own hands to grow 
the natural products of the tropics, he can live there, and en- 
joy all his faculties of mind and body with the same certainty 
and success that belong to the temperate latitudes. It may be 
that the temptations to indulgence, to voluptuousness, or to 
the gratification of the animal appetites, are greater in these 
warm and glowing climes, but surely no more so than in our own 
summers, compared with the winter or other less attractive 
seasons. On the contrary, the necessities of cleanliness and 
the less potent demand for stimulants, with the cooling and 
delicious fruits of the tropics, tend to delicacy of tastes and 
appetites. At all events, it is certain that the grossest, most 
brutal, and most immoral populations of Europe are found in 
the far north, while those of southern Europe are the most 
temperate and the most delicate in their habitudes of any peo- 
ple in the world. But climate has little, if any, influence in 
these respects. The white man under the same circumstances 
is the same being, and his grossness and immorality, or his del- 
icacy, temperance, and morality, are things of chance, accord- 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 249 

ing as lie has been educated, and circumstances, public and 
private, have formed his character. As a master, as the guide 
and protector of the subordinate negro, he may live wherever 
the latter can, otherwise the negro would have been created 
in vain — a blank in the economy of the universe, a contradiction 
in the designs of Providence, and a blotch on the fair form of 
creation. Generally speaking, climate or other external cir- 
cumstances have influence over the life, either human or ani- 
mal, according as they are low in the scale of being, and 
therefore while the Caucasian man can live and enjoy the full 
development of all his powers in the tropics, the negro and 
other inferior races are absolutely limited to their own centres of 
existence. The Mongols have been confined to those portions 
of Asia where they now exist, ever since known to history, for 
though in the mighty invasions of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, 
and others, when millions of them spread like a flood over other 
regions, and even as far as Chalons, in France, they almost as 
rapidly receded, and are now just where history first found them. 
The modern slave-trade, carried on so extensively by the 
English of our day, where these people, under various pre- 
texts, are placed aboard ships and sent to Jamaica, and other 
West Indian Islands, to supply the place of the abandoned 
negro, must be a far greater wrong than the importation of 
negroes from Africa, for it is a violation of the laws of climate 
that must rapidly destroy them, while in the case of the negro 
he is still within that centre of existence, where God himself 
placed him. The Malay, too, is in his own centre of life, and 
like all the inferior races, never migrates from it. The Esqui- 
maux, buried in the bleak and desolate North, never ventures 
beyond it, and should he be carried into the tropics by the 
white man, would doubtless soon succumb under its burning 
suns. We know but little of the Indian or aboriginal in these 
respects. They now constitute the industrial forces of Mex- 

11* 



250 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

ico, and,except Brazil,of all South America. There are some ten 
millions of them, and as we know that the negro never can 
labor on the table-lands, or live at all in an atmosphere several 
thousand feet above the level of the sea, it may become a ques- 
tion of immense importance to the civilization of this conti- 
nent to determine the natural position and our true relations to 
this race. The negro, more distinctly, perhaps, than any other 
race, is limited to his centres of life. If Dr. Kane had taken 
any with him in his Northwest explorations, it is hardly 
possible that they could have lived through it, if of pure ne- 
gro type. His organic structure, while as perfectly adapted to 
a tropical climate as the eye is to sight or any other organism 
to a given purpose or function, utterly forbids him to live be- 
yond a certain latitude. An individual may do so, of course, 
or a generation or more may linger out a miserable existence, 
but his structure forbids that he should multiply himself or be- 
come a permanent resident in the extreme north. There are 
great numbers in Canada, the result of that wide- spread igno- 
rance of his true nature that has worked out such tremendous 
evils to these poor people as well as to the deluded and mis- 
taken whites. Their situation in Canada is the most misera- 
ble, perhaps, that human beings can possibly endure. It would 
be miserable enough if they had masters, guides, protectors, 
and providers for their wants, but, without these, with none of 
the external circumstances with which God surrounded them 
when He first called them into being, and then left to compete 
with white men for the means of subsistence, it is repeated 
that their condition must be the most deplorable to which un- 
happy human creatures could be subjected. The constant ac- 
cession to their numbers through the Underground Railroad 
renders any thing like an estimate of the fatality among them 
quite out of the question, but when, in addition to their ab- 
normal social condition, there is the pressure of an unnatural 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTEIAL ADAPTATION. 251 

climate or of external influences utterly opposite to those that 
God originally provided for them, and directly in conflict with 
their organic structure, then it is obvious, of course, that they 
must perish rapidly. 

All those physicians in the North who have had any expe- 
rience of the diseases of these people, know the tendencies to 
consumption or disease of the respiratory organs so common, 
almost universal among them, but few if any have known that 
this was a necessary result of the peculiar structure of the 
negro. His entire surface is studded with innumerable se- 
baceous glands, which are the safety-valves that nature has 
provided for relieving his system from the action of vertical 
suns, but these rendered torpid, indeed incapable of perform- 
ing their functions in the icy atmosphere of the North, con- 
gestion and disease of the lungs necessarily follows. Almost 
every one has seen negroes in Northern cities, who have lost 
their legs by frost at sea— a thing rarely witnessed among 
whites, and yet where a single negro has been thus exposed, 
doubtless a thousand of the former have. Climate, therefore, 
has a fixed and absolute control over the existence of the 
negro. God has adapted him, both in his physical and men- 
tal structure, to the tropics, and though he can live in the tem- 
perate latitudes, his welfare, his happiness, and the develop- 
ment of his faculties are secured just as he conforms to the 
designs of the Almighty, as written in his organism, and lives 
within the centre of existence where he was created. And 
those ignorant and terribly mistaken people who have seduced 
and led him into the bleak and forbidden North, have uncon- 
sciously committed a crime that would appall them if they 
could truly comprehend it. 

Such are, briefly, the more prominent laws of climate, and 
their influence on men and animals ; but as climate itself, in 
the ordinary meaning of the word, has regard only to degrees 



252 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

of latitude, or to modifications of heat and cold, they are of 
secondary importance, or, at most, are only a portion of those 
general laws of adaptation which govern animal existence, and 
harmonize it with the locality in which it was originally created. 
Beyond the few exceptions referred to, all organic existence 
is adapted to its own centre of life, and incapable of living in 
any other. This is illustrated every day, and familiar to the 
least observing among us. Cereals and vegetables of every 
kind demand, if not always a special climate, certainly a spe- 
cial soil. Corn, wheat, etc., require a soil suited to them — 
there must be a special adaptation of external circumstances, 
for there is an eternal relation between the organism and the 
circumstances that surround it. The most ignorant among 
our agriculturists know from their own experience that cer- 
tain things can only grow on certain soils, and this fixed and 
indestructible law, thus manifested in the simpler forms of 
being, pervades the whole organic world. And, as remarked, 
it is in exceptional instances, or the instances where climate 
does not govern, that these adaptations to particular soils are 
essential. In general, it can not be transplanted or removed 
from its own centre of existence. The products of the tropics 
— the sugar cane, coffee, indigo, cotton, etc., the numerous 
fruits, etc., can not be changed, or, at all events, can not be 
grown successfully outside of their original centre of creation. 
As we ascend in the scale, the laws of adaptation, are, of course, 
multiplied, or become more elaborate, and in the case of human 
beings, they are widely diversified with numerous secondary 
relations ; but the great universal and all-dominating law that 
unites men to their centres of existence, is as indestructible 
and everlasting as it is in the simplest form of vegetable exis- 
tence. God has created both them and the external circum- 
stances, has given them a specific structure and corresponding 
faculties, and He has made the earth, the soils, the form of its 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 253 

products, its climate, etc., in perfect accord with the former, 
and as time and chance, or human forces, can never change or 
modify the works of the Almighty, this law of adaptation is 
everlasting. 

The white man — as a laborer — is adapted to the temperate 
latitudes, not because mere climate, or heat and cold, demand 
it, but because such is his natural adaptation. All the exter- 
nal circumstances accord with his nature — his physical struc- 
ture and his intellectual endowments. The soil, its natural 
products — the time and mode of their growth, their ripening or 
maturity, in short, their cultivation is in perfect harmony with 
his faculties. The farmer of Ohio or Illinois, for example, 
ploughs and prepares his fields through the early summer, for 
sowing them with wheat in the early autumn. The process is 
elaborate. The land must be manured, ploughed carefully at 
different times, harrowed over at intervals, and gradually 
made ready for the reception of the seed. Then he carefully 
selects that which his experience assures him is best. After it 
is sown he again harrows over his fields, watches them care- 
fully for several months, and then, the crop having ripened, an- 
other process begins. 

This is equally elaborate and demands the fullest exercise 
of his mental faculties as well as the labor of his body. He 
must watch and judge of the weather, when he shall gather 
in his crops, how dispose of them, etc. ; then comes the thresh- 
ing, the separation of the grain, etc., the disposal of the straw, 
the feeding of his stock, all again needing the fullest exercise 
of all his highest faculties. Then, again, begins another pro- 
cess — if not personal or where he himself is the leading party, 
where men like himself or with the same faculties as himself 
are associated with him and engaged in completing the pro- 
cess which he began. That which he planted and gathered is 
now still more elaborately manipulated. The wheat is changed 



254 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

into flour by a lengthened and elaborate process, and then pass- 
ing through another elaboration, it becomes bread— the sus- 
tenance of the race, the natural food of the millions, the legi- 
timate result of a healthy exercise of his specific faculties and 
of the industrial adaptation of the race. Beginning with the 
selection of the land, its preparation, the selection, etc., of the 
seed, the planting, the care and estimate of the weather, the 
ripening, the gathering, the separation of the grain, the trans- 
format-ion into flour, the still greater change into bread, in the 
entire process, from the occupation of the land to the moment 
when placed on the table of his household, the tout ensemble 
needs and calls into action the highest faculties of reasoning 
and comparison, and however uneducated or ignorant the in- 
dividual may seem, when compared with the man of books, 
the process, or rather processes, would be impossible, of course, 
to any race except our own, or to beings with capacities in- 
ferior to those of the white man. 

It is the same with all the other products common or indi- 
genous to temperate latitudes. They all demand the highest 
capacities for their cultivation. The nature of the soils, the 
fitness of particular products to particular soils, the periods of 
growth, of ripening, the influences of the atmosphere, the 
action of heat and cold, the change of seasons, etc., are all in 
harmony with the elevated faculties, while the result, then- 
cultivation and uses, are all essential to the welfare and happi- 
ness of the white man. The industrial adaptation is complete, 
the varying soils, often widely different on the same farm, the 
numerous regulations, the multiplied relations and connections 
involved, the changing seasons and complicated circumstances 
render the temperate latitudes as absolutely the centre of life to 
the white man, industrially considered, as the tropics are to the 
negro, or as any of the simpler forms of being are to the local- 
ities in which we find them. The industrial and specific adap- 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 255 

tation of the negro to his own centre of life is, however, more 
palpable and demonstrable, for his limited intelligence and 
more direct relations to external circumstances enable us to 
grasp the facts involved more readily. The soil of the tropics 
has little variation, and rarely needs any manure or prepara- 
tion like those of temperate latitudes. And the indigenous 
products, those that need care and labor for their cultivation, 
however luxuriant their growth, are few in number. There 
are almost innumerable species of fruits that grow spontane- 
ously, and indeed a great number of plants that are nutritious, 
which need no care or labor, and which the negro, in his iso- 
lated or barbarous state, lives on to a great extent. But the 
great natural products of the tropics, those that are essential 
to human welfare, which are at this instant the most impor- 
tant elements of modern commerce, and are vitally affecting 
the civilization of our times, are few in number, and need only 
the lowest grade of intelligence for their cultivation. Cotton, 
for example, needs but little beyond planting and picking, and 
sugar, so far as the labor is concerned, is even more simple. 
It is true, in the complete elaboration and final perfection of 
these products, the manufacture, etc., the highest order of in- 
telligence is called into action, but this has no necessary con- 
nection with the negro. Cotton is shipped to the North or 
Europe, and passes altogether into other hands, and though the 
negro labor was vital in the preliminary stages, it has no more 
connection with the ultimate disposition of this material than 
the labor of mules that were employed to prepare the earth 
for its original cultivation. Coffee, tobacco, indigo, etc., are 
all equally simple, all hi accord with the simple soils, the uni- 
form atmosphere, the primitive laws of development, as they 
may be termed, and in perfect harmony with the grade of in- 
telligence, the specific nature and industrial adaptation of the 
negro. 



256 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

His physical organism is adapted to the cultivation of these 
products as perfectly as is his grade of intelligence. His head 
is protected from the rays of a vertical sun by a dense mat of 
woolly hair, wholly impervious to its fiercest heats, while his 
entire surface, studded with innumerable sebaceous glands, 
forming a complete excretory system, relieves him from all 
those climatic influences so fatal, under the same circumstances, 
to the sensitive and highly organized white man. Instead of 
seeking to shelter himself from the burning sun of the tropics, 
he courts it, enjoys it, delights in its fiercest heats, and malaria 
— that deadly poison to the white man, which, in the form of 
yellow fever, has swept from existence vast multitudes of our 
race, is as harmless to the negro organism as the balmy breezes 
of May or June to the organization of the white man. Of 
course mulattoes and mongrels may have something that ap- 
proximates to the yellow fever of the white man, but to the 
negro it is simply an organic impossibility. His faculties, his 
simple grade of intelligence, his physical organism, his specific, 
climatic, and industrial adaptations are therefore in perfect har- 
mony with the primitive soils, the simple products, and uni- 
form atmosphere of the tropics, and in complete relation and 
perfect union with the circumstances that surround him in the 
centre of existence where the Almighty has placed him. 

The late Daniel Webster once declared that God had limited 
" slavery" to certain climates, and that he, at least, would not 
" reenact the will of God," and this declaration, though as a 
form of speech absurd enough, was certainly in close neighbor- 
hood to a great and vital truth. If he had said that the 
Almighty had adapted the negro to certain climates, he w^ould 
have expressed just what w T e are now -considering; but the 
relation of the negro to the white man, the thing he called 
slavery, is, of course, as proper and as natural in New York or 
Ohio as in Mississippi. The vulgar notion, therefore, that 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 257 

" slave labor," the industrial capacities of the negro, is unpro- 
fitable in temperate latitudes is only partially true. The 
" slave" relation, the normal condition, as contrasted with the 
so-called free negro, presents just the difference between a use- 
ful negro and a worthless negro, or a negro who adds to the 
productive forces of a State, and one who lives on the State — 
a healthy and a diseased social element, and therefore wherever 
found, if, indeed, in the extreme North, it is simply absurd to 
speak of the former as unprofitable when contrasted with the 
latter. But when the negro is contrasted with the white man 
in Ohio or New York, then the whole subject is changed. 
His industrial capacities are incompetent to grow the indige- 
nous products of the temperate latitudes. 

The reasoning, the reflection, the elevated faculties called 
into action, that are absolutely essential to the cultivation of 
their products, the varying and complicated soils, their elabo- 
rate preparation, the care and judgment needed in gathering 
them, etc., the still more elaborate processes before they are 
rendered fit for human sustenance, all this needs the high in- 
telligence, and therefore the large brain, of the white man, and 
to the isolated negro is impossible, of course. 

It is true, the master may guide them, and the owner of a 
hundred negroes hi Ohio may carry on these processes and 
cultivate the soils of the Western and Middle States some- 
times, perhaps, when all labor is scarce, with tolerable success. 
But their inferiority, their lower grade of intelligence, the time 
and trouble expended in this guidance, must be so palpable to 
every one who reflects a moment, that the case only needs to 
be stated to convince them of the relative worthlessness of this 
labor. And leaving out of view the force of climate, the 
changing seasons, the sudden frosts which sometimes disable 
and very generally affect the negro injuriously, and in the end 
destroy him — leaving all this out of consideration, and con- 



258 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTKIAL ADAPTATION. 

templating his mere industrial adaptations, it is obvious that 
the negro can never be, as he never has been, able to cultivate 
the soils or grow the products of the temperate latitudes. 
But while the great dividing lines are distinct enough, while 
the white man and negro, in their industrial adaptations, can 
never be in conflict when each is within that centre of exist- 
ence to which the Almighty Creator has adapted and designed 
him, there is a large extent of territory where they may both 
labor to advantage, and where time and circumstances may 
often determine their presence and their fitness for such labor. 
The white man is forever forbidden by the laws of his organi- 
zation to labor under a tropical sun, or to grow by his own 
physical efforts the products indigenous to the trojrics. The 
negro, by the laws of both his physical structure and mental 
nature, is forever incapable of cultivating the soil or of grow- 
ing the products indigenous or common to the temperate 
latitudes. 

These great elementary and indestructible truths, which, 
fixed forever by the hand of God, admit of no exception, 
change, or modification whatever, which time, and circum- 
stances, and human power can not influence, any more than 
the laws of gravitation, or animal growth, or the term of ani- 
mal existence, or any other law of the Creator of the universe, 
will not be mistaken ; but when we come to consider the 
approximating latitudes, then there is a wide field opened 
up, to our view, to chance, to time, to a multitude of con- 
siderations. 

In general terms, it may be said, that wherever the white 
man can labor with effect, that is, can preserve his health and 
the full exercise of his faculties, there his labor must be more 
valuable than is that of the negro. People who are ignorant 
of the laws of climate and industrial adaptations, and still 
worse, ignorant of the nature of the negro and his relations to 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 259 

the white man, when traveling on the Ohio River, observe 
that the populations on the Ohio side are more energetic, 
industrious, and prosperous than they are on the Kentucky 
side of the river, and they infer that it is because Kentucky 
has " slavery." The author is not prepared to admit their 
assumption, for though there may be greater wealth and 
apparently greater prosperity in Ohio, the true and only test 
of well-being in a State is the equality of condition and of the 
happiness of its people, and we have no means of determining 
this truth by applying this test in the present instance. Eng- 
land is vastly more wealthy than any other State in Christen- 
dom — its annual production is vastly greater, but this wealth 
is monopolized by a fraction of the population. While the great 
body of the people are steeped in poverty to the lips, and 
while the few are every day growing wealthier, the many are, 
with equal rapidity and certainty, becoming more abject in 
their poverty, and, consequently more ignorant, vicious, and 
miserable. If, therefore, it were true that Ohio did increase in 
wealth more rapidly than Kentucky, it would by no means 
follow that the people of Ohio were in a better condition than 
those of Kentucky. But it is reasonable to suppose that the 
production is greater than that of Kentucky, for while the 
climate and industrial adaptation are suited to the white man, 
there are none but white men in Ohio, while nearly half of the 
laboring population of Kentucky are negroes. The same 
absurd assumption and inference have been made in respect to 
Virginia and other so-called Slave States, when contrasted 
with New York and other so-called Free States. It has been 
said, " Virginia falls behind New York in general prosperity." 
" It is because she has half a million of slaves, and if she will 
abolish this slavery, then she will soon equal, perhaps surpass, 
New York, for Virginia has certain natural advantages which 
New York has not." Or, in other words, it is said that Vir- 



260 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

ginia is less prosperous than New York, because her half a 
million of negroes are in a normal condition, and if she will 
thrust them from this condition and turn them loose, as New 
York has done, then Virginia will soon be equally prosperous 
as the latter ! Possibly one out of twenty of the negroes in 
New York, Ohio, or any other so-called Free State, is engaged 
in productive labor, while the nineteen others live — tempor- 
arily — on the labor of the producing classes of those States. 
The argument of these political economists, therefore, is sim- 
ply this : Virginia with half a million of industrious and pro- 
ductive negroes, is less prosperous than N"ew York, but if she 
will transform them into half a million of idle, non-productive, 
and good-for-nothing negroes, then she will rapidly recover 
from her present depressed condition. But enough — these 
people who set up an abstraction entirely nonsensical, must 
reach conclusions equally preposterous. They are not only 
ignorant of what they argue about so pompously, but they 
imagine conditions that not only do not but can not exist, 
either here or elsewhere, in our own times or any other, in the 
existing, or any other world. 

Virginia, Kentucky, all of the transition States, all the States 
with considerable negro populations that are in the temperate 
latitudes, are, of course, less productive than those bordering 
on them with entire white populations, for the negro is greatly 
inferior in his industrial capabilities, as in all other respects, 
where white men can labor. Thus far there can be no doubt, 
for there is no room for doubt, but it by no means follows 
that the people of Ohio or Pennsylvania are in a better condi- 
tion than those of Kentucky and Virginia. The people of Vir- 
ginia, if not homogenenous in race, are so in interest, and that 
one great fact underlying the social condition, is itself, or in 
the results that flow from it, of vast benefit. The interests of 
the State, of all its people, the " slaveholder," a non-slave- 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 261 

holder," and the negro or so-called slave, are homogeneous, uni- 
versal, and indivisible, and therefore without social conflict, or 
causes for social conflict, the tendencies of the social order are 
harmonious and beneficent. The only seeming conflict or the 
sole thing that superficial thinkers might mistake for such, is 
the fact that the negro is not adapted to the locality, and they 
might suppose that therefore the owner of his services, or of 
this so-called slave property, might, to a certain extent, mo- 
nopolize the soil that of right belonged to the white laborer. 
But a moment's reflection will be sufficient to convince any 
rational mind of the unsoundness of this supposition. 

A Virginia planter may, perhaps, inherit a thousand acres of 
land and a hundred negroes. His poor white neighbor is with- 
out land perhaps, and thinks it hard that these negroes, whom 
his instinct as well as reason assures him are not as well 
adapted to the locality as himself, should occupy it, while 
he has none. But the planter himself is worse off still. The 
land is worn out — the negro capacity can not resuscitate it — 
they barely earn sufficient for the common support — the 
planter finds it hard to five at all, and only does so, perhaps, 
by parting with some of his people, and therefore whatever 
the evil of this negro element in localities which the changes 
of time and circumstances have brought about, it is an evil 
that presses upon the owner of this species of property with 
vastly greater force than it does on the non-slaveholder. Of 
course the remedy is obvious — " Slavery Extension" — free and 
full expansion — the acquisition of new territories suited to the 
industrial capacities of the negro. For example, if we sup- 
pose the late General Walker had been successful, and opened 
Central America to American settlement, energy, civilization, 
and prosperity — the Virginia or Maryland planter, who now 
finds it difficult to " make both ends meet," would gather up 
his household and migrate to these inviting and fertile regions. 



2C2 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

His negroes producing double or treble, or even more, in their 
new homes, he could afford to send his children to the North 
or Europe to be educated, and himself spend his summers at 
the Springs or abroad, and live as luxuriously as he pleased, 
while his negroes or so-called slaves, in their centre of exist- 
ence, where God ordained that they should live, laving them- 
selves in the genial heats of the tropics, with all their best and 
highest capacities called into action, and the best qualities of 
their nature healthily and naturally developed, would be even 
more benefited, perhaps, than the master himself. The va- 
cancy would be filled by the increasing white population, by 
the constant inflowing of the mighty masses pouring in upon 
us from the Old World, by the poor German or other Euro- 
pean peasant, who only needs liberty and the means for devel- 
oping the high nature with which God endowed him, to ex- 
hibit himself as the equal of the kings and aristocrats who 
have crushed him into an artificial inferiority actually resem- 
bling the natural inferiority of the negro, and these impover- 
ished soils being resuscitated by his industry, his intelligence, 
in short, his industrial adaptations, the now wasted and wast- 
ing lands of the transition States would become, and doubtless 
will become some day, the very garden of the republic. Nor 
would this be the whole of the beneficial process in question. 
The world needs, and especially our own farmers and working 
classes need, the products of the tropics. Sugar, and coffee, 
and tropical fruits should be had at half their present prices, 
while the increased production, the extension of commerce and 
general progress would have a vast influence over the civiliza- 
tion of our times by this simple application of industrial forces 
in conformity with the fundamental laws of climatic and indus- 
trial adaptation. A large majority of our negro population are 
at this moment outside of their own centre of existence, and 
a time will come when the border or transition States will prob- 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 263 

ably have few of these people. As observed, it is absurd, 
a contradiction, an abuse of language, to speak of " slav- 
ery," or the social subordination of the negro, as an evil, or as 
being, under any possible circumstances, unprofitable, for that 
involves the anomaly of supposing the idle and good-for-nothing 
negro a benefit to the State ; but the negro is profitable to his 
master, beneficial to the State, and happy himself in such pro- 
portion as he approximates to the tropics, and is placed in juxta- 
position with the external circumstances to which God has 
adapted him. They or their progenitors were mainly landed 
at northern ports. They were, in the then scarcity of labor, 
possibly needed even in the Central States. As an advanced 
guard in the rising civilization of the New World, they were 
once, perhaps, essential to the Provinces of Virginia, Maryland, 
etc., for the rich soil, the rank vegetation, the extensive marshes 
and wild river bottoms generated an extent and degree of ma- 
laria that was often fatal to the white man, and rendered the 
labor and aid of these people of vital importance in the early 
settlement of the country. But as the country became cnlti- 
tivated and white laborers became plenty, it was seen that the 
labor of the negro was less valuable ; so that Mr. Jefferson, and 
many of his cotemporaries, actually fancied it an evil, and desired 
to be relieved from it. And indeed, what was worse still — 
they confounded the existence of the negro with the relation, 
the so-called slavery, of the negro ; and it was only when 
Louisiana Avas occupied, and new and appropriate regions 
were opened to the negro, and in harmony with his industrial 
capacities, that this erroneous notion of Mr. Jefferson and 
others disappeared from the southern mind. Virginia has still 
a large negro population, but while they are mainly employed 
in cultivating tobacco, suited to the simple capacity and 
subordinate nature of the negro, the demand for cotton, rice, 
sugar, etc., in the great tropical regions of the republic, is 



264 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

rapidly attracting them southward, and in conformity with 
their own happiness as well as the welfare of the white citi- 
zenship, this process is destined to go on until they are all 
within their own centre of existence. Whether or not Virginia, 
or any other transition State, would be better without them at 
this time, it is of course impossible to say, or to conjecture 
even. The simple fact, however, of their presence there would 
seem to indicate that it was desirable to have them among them 
yet, or at all events in considerable numbers, but the indus- 
trial attraction is constantly carrying them further south — 
to Texas, Florida, and other Gulf States, where their labor 
is more valuable. 

These general laws of climatic and industrial adaptation, 
which thus underlie the social fabric when made up of mixed 
populations, are also illustrated by the national history, and 
demonstrated in every step of the national progress. When 
negroes were first introduced into the British North American 
Colonies, there was, of course, and for many years after, a 
great demand for labor. Here was a mighty continent, a new 
world, open to the enterprise and energy of the most energetic 
and most enterprising branch of the great master race of man- 
kind. All that was wanted was labor — labor, too, that was 
of the lowest kind in some respects, and laborers whose im- 
perfect innervation and low grade of sensibility could resist 
the malarious influences always more or less potent in new 
countries and virgin soils, even in temperate latitudes, were 
often desirable. The Bristol and the Liverpool " slave mer- 
chants," therefore — the progenitors of the saints and philan- 
thropists of Exeter Hall — supplied these wants, ordinarily 
with negroes, but occasionally with some of their own poorer 
and more helpless brethren, whom they did not hesitate to 
kidnap and send out to labor on the American plantations. 
Negroes, therefore, were forced from the sea-board to the in- 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 266 

terior, even as far as Canada, while the Central Colonies had 
even very considerable numbers of these people. With the 
downfall of the British dominion, however, the Bristol mer- 
chants were forced to engage in other enterprises, and as the 
genius and daring of Clive and his companions had just then 
opened a new and boundless empire in India, English capital, 
enterprise, and polity took another direction, and though the 
African trade was continued for some years afterward by our 
own people, there were, comparatively, but few negroes im- 
ported after the overthrow of the British rule. After the re- 
moval of a foreign and artificial rule, and the establishment of 
a political system in harmony with the instincts and wants of 
<mr people, the social and industrial laws were permitted a 
natural development, and from this period a widely different 
movement began. Negro labor was less profitable in the 
Eastern than in the Central States, and of course less profitable 
in the latter than in Virginia, the Carolinas, etc., and therefore 
the industrial attraction carried them from the interior to the 
sea-board, and from the North to the South. The acquisition 
of Louisiana, of Florida, etc., the opening of new regions and 
the formation of new States adapted to the climatic wants and 
industrial capabilities of the negro, drained them off still 
more rapidly. Mr. Jefferson and others, as has been observed, 
confounding the relation of the races, or so-called slavery, with 
the non-adaptability of the negro labor in temperate latitudes, 
desired to exclude, not negroes, but the social relation which 
they supposed an evil, from the northwest territory, and the 
old confederation, it will be remembered, passed an ordinance 
to that effect. This " ordinance," which ignorance and folly 
have so long worshipped as a " bulwark of freedom," with 
as abject a spirit; and total absence of reason as the Hindoo 
worships his Juggernaut, of course never had, nor could have, 
the slightest influence over the subject. 

12 



266 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

If there had been no extension of onr southern borders, 
no Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, or other States adapted to 
the wants and industrial capabilities of the negro, the whole 
Northwest, at this moment, would be what these blind and 
mistaken people term " slave territory." The cheap lands and 
fresh soils of the West, would attract the holders of this 
species of property even more strongly than any others, and 
the only difference, so far as the negro is concerned, would be, 
or could be, that their numbers would be less than at present. 
As he approximates to his centre of existence, or as the negro 
is in harmony with the external conditions to which the 
Almighty has adapted him, his well-being is secured, his vital- 
ity is greater, and he multiplies himself more rapidly ; there- 
fore as regards the negro element, it would have been less in 
the Northwest than it is now in the Southwest, but the rela- 
tion, of course, would be as at present, for however willing 
Vermont, or some other State without negroes might be to 
pervert these relations, and in theory place themselves on a 
level with a subordinate race, those who are in juxtaposition 
with negroes have never done so, or thus voluntarily attempted 
social suicide. 

Mr. Jefferson, by the acquisition of Louisiana and the exten- 
sion of our Southern limits, therefore, " saved" the Northwest 
from a negro population and so-called slavery, just as the 
acquisition of Texas by President Tyler and the eminent and 
far-seeing Calhoun and others, at a later day, opened other 
and still wider regions adapted to the wants and specific nature 
of our negro population, and which are now, by the natural and 
indestructible laws of climate and industrial adaptation, gradu- 
ally withdrawing this population from the border or transition 
States. Indeed, one only needs to examine the several census 
returns of the federal government, from 1790 to 1860, to un- 
derstand both the history of the country, in these respects, and 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 267 

the operation of the laws of climate and industrial adaptation. 
They will then see that the negro element constantly tends 
southward — a black column ever on the march for its own 
centre of existence — an advance guard of American civiliza- 
tion, that moves on without cessation, and that must continue 
to advance until it is in perfect accord with those external con- 
ditions to which it is naturally adapted. Nor is the interest 
of the master — the increased value of the negro labor — the 
sole motive power, though certainly the leading cause of this 
progress southward. The increased and increasing Avhite 
population, with the vast European emigration, is pressing on 
its rear, while the demands of modern society for the products 
of its labor, and many other influences, are every day increas- 
ing in force, and impelling the negro tropicward with greater 
rapidity at present, perhaps, than ever before. 

Persons wholly ignorant of these causes, or of the laws un- 
derlying this progress of the negro southward, have blindly 
labored against it, and in regard to the annexation of Texas, 
which opened such a wide and beneficent field for negro in- 
dustry, and therefore for the true welfare of these people, they 
doubtless really believed they were doing them a kindness 
when thus foolishly striving to reverse the ordinances of the 
Eternal, and to prevent the expansion of this negro popula- 
tion. And this expansion, or this industrial attraction con- 
stantly going on from Virginia and other border States to 
Texas and the Gulf States, doubtless does appear unjust, and, 
perhaps, inhuman to those ignorant of the negro nature, as 
well as of those laws of industrial adaptation which always 
have and always must govern the subject. The sale of negroes 
in Richmond and Norfolk, to be sent South, seems to them, 
perhaps, a great hardship, but while it is believed that the 
larger portion are accompanied by their masters, who naturally 
seek new homes in Texas, etc., there is no other possible 



268 CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 

mode or means through which they could reach a more genial 
clime, and therefore, even if it were indeed a harsh procedure 
to sell them in Richmond, it would still be vastly more :' nhu- 
man to keep them from approximating to their specific centre 
of existence. As it is, it is true beneficence and kindness to 
facilitate their progress southward; but if they really were 
hVdck-white men, as the ignorant anti-slaveryite fancies they 
are, and without any specific affinity or adaptation for a tropi- 
cal climate, even in that case their public sale at Richmond or 
Norfolk, to supply the labor market of Texas, would not in- 
volve a thousandth part of the misery and physical suffering 
endured by a very considerable portion of those British sub- 
jects who annually arrive at New York. Indeed, it is safe to 
say that the thousand or so diseased, half-starved, and mis- 
erable British subjects, which the Mayor of New York had 
penned up and out of sight of the Prince of Wales at Castle 
Garden, in order not to offend the olfactories or revolt the 
senses of that young person, embodied more physical suffering, 
more wrong and outrage on humanity, than could be inflicted 
on negroes through all eternity, so far as this process of exten- 
sion southward may be concerned. The master, or the man 
who purchases the service of the negro, has, of course, the ut- 
most interest in taking care of him and providing for all his 
wants, while the negro himself, on the way to the climate and 
the external conditions for which the Almighty has adapted 
him, must be in the pathway of progress, and advancing gen- 
erally toward that goal of happiness and well-being which the 
common Creator has designed for all His creatures. 

No law or legislation would seem to be needed — nothing but 
the removal of all obstructions from the path of progress, and 
the free and full development of the laws of industrial attrac- 
tion. The demands for tropical products, and the greater 
value of the negro labor — the necessities of modern civilization 



CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. 269 

and the interests of the master — have carried the negro from 
the Central, as they are now carrying him from the border 
States, toward the great tropical centre of the continent. 
And by a beneficent and inevitable necessity which God him- 
self has fixed forever in the economy of the universe, the wel- 
fare of the negro is secured in exact proportion as these laws 
of industrial attraction and adaptation are permitted free 
action and full development. 

In conclusion, therefore, it would seem that a simple re- 
moval of all obstructions to these fixed and fundamental laws 
would be all that was needed to secure the best welfare of all 
— white men and negroes — of the North equally with the 
South, for while the industrial attraction would remove the 
negro element just as fast as the interests of the border States 
may demand, the West can always secure themselves from a 
considerable negro population, by aiding in the removal of ob- 
structions from our southern borders, as Jefferson saved them 
sixty years ago. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

NORTH AND SOUTH. — ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF 
GOVERNMENT. 

Although the progenitors of our so-called slaves were 
mainly imported at Northern ports, and all of the Northern 
and Middle States have had, at times, considerable negro pop- 
ulations, the process of transition southward has been so rapid 
that the Northern communities, or the people of the Northern 
States, have been but little impressed by them or influenced 
in their ideas and mental habits by the presence of this widely 
different and subordinate element of our general population. 
But when they became a fixed population, when Virginia, 
especially, had acquired what, by comparison, may be called a 
large negro element, then the actual presence of these negroes 
called into existence new ideas, and gave development to new 
modes of thought or mental habitudes. All our ideas and 
mental habits are, in a sense, accidental, the result of circum- 
stances, just as language, which is the outward expression of 
our ideas, becomes changed by time and circumstances. The 
English of the tenth century were widely different, of course, 
in their ideas and mental habits from the English of the four- 
teenth century, under the rule of the Normans ; and this differ- 
ence was widely varied from anything that mere time or ordi- 
nary circumstances could have produced. 

And the different mental habits of the people of America 
generally, when contrasted with those of Europe, show suffi- 
ciently that all our ideas are accidental, the result of local cir- 
cumstances, though, of course, all are in subordination to 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 271 

those fixed and fundamental laws of mind that are specific with 
the race. The presence, therefore, of the negro — of a widely- 
different and subordinate element of the population of Vir- 
ginia, and other States, when it became stationary and had to 
be provided for by the local legislatures, its specific wants as 
well as those of the citizenship looked after, and its social 
adaptations rendered harmonious with the welfare of the for- 
mer — naturally developed new ideas of government and new 
modes of thought in the dominant and governing race. Except, 
possibly, some of the Spanish colonies south of us, there was 
no portion of the New World where so many of those who 
could claim connection with European aristocracy originally 
settled as in the province of Virginia. 

In the earlier days of Massachusetts a great number of the 
most respectable of the middle classes of English society, and 
some few instances of the old hereditary nobility, found new 
homes in the colony, but in the latter case they had abandoned 
the old Norman traditions, and to enjoy their religion and 
'•'freedom of conscience," identified themselves with Puritan- 
ism. In the Dutch province of New York, there was, perhaps, 
a somewhat larger infusion of the aristocratic element, but as 
Holland itself was essentially republican, and the Dutch really 
the originators of modern liberty in Europe, and, moreover, 
had a very limited landed aristocracy compared with England, 
France, etc., but few persons identified by tradition and asso- 
ciation with the hereditary aristocracy of the Old "World found 
their way into the Dutch settlements of the New. 

. But Virginia was originally settled — to a very large extent 
— by the offspring of the old Norman chivalry, by the cava- 
liers — the descendants of the proudest, most warlike, most 
chivalrous, heroic, and enterprising, and, at the same time, 
most tyrannical and oppressive aristocracy the world has ever 
seen. Those who belong to the race — the same species- -of 



272 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

course will, under the same circumstances, manifest the same 
qualities, and therefore, if at any time the child of the princely 
Plantagenet or lordly Warwick had been exchanged in its 
cradle with the " base" progeny of some Saxon churl, who fed 
and kenneled with their hounds, the latter would have grown 
up with all the pride and chivalry, and princely bravery com- 
mon to the former. Nevertheless, a class, an aristocracy, a 
privileged order, forms sentiments, ideas, etc., and transmits 
its traditions, rules, etc., to its descendants, that may, for cen- 
turies perhaps, preserve their integrity. Even in our social 
every-day life, and changing society, we often see families 
transmitting their family usages, habitudes, modes of thought 
as well as action, for several generations, and with only slight 
departures from the family model left by some original or 
venerated ancestor. Aristocracies, however, usually destroy 
themselves by the very means they resort to to preserve their 
ascendency over the great body of the people. In order to 
preserve the respect, the awe, the continued belief of the vul- 
gar mass in their seeming superiority, they must avoid the 
populace and intermarry with their order, and the more com- 
pletely this is done, the more they become a close corporation 
as it were, and violate the laws of consanguinity, the more 
rapidly they are deteriorated and fall below the general aver- 
age of the people. The Northmen, the robust and enterpris- 
ing fishermen of the Baltic, the fillibusters and pirates of the 
Northern Seas, invaded France and conquered Normandy, 
and Holla and his roving horde of followers threatened to 
overrun Paris, and indeed the whole kingdom. They finally 
settled down in Normandy, from which, at a later date, they 
emerged into Italy, conquered Naples, the island of Sicily, and 
for a long time threatened an invasion of the Oriental World, 
which could hardly have resisted such an indomitable race of 
men. A Duke — a bastard Duke of Normandy, at that time 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 273 

laid claim to the crown of England, and with forty thousand 
followers landed in that country, and in a single battle so com- 
pletely demolished the " Anglo-Saxons" and Anglo-Saxonism, 
so much boasted of in these days, that the former have re- 
mained slaves ever since, and the latter was so utterly annihi- 
lated that it disappeared for ever on that fatal day at Hastings. 
Then, for the first time, the Normans assumed the distinct 
form of an aristocracy or privileged order. 

Though they had long since cast off the rude habits and 
uncouth manners of adventurers and conquerors, and when 
they invaded England were, perhaps, as intelligent and refined 
as any similar number of European people, and a great deal 
more so than those they conquered in England, they had never 
assumed the form, enacted laws, or established rules and regu- 
lations as an aristocracy or governing class. From this time 
forth, however, the Norman aristocracy ruled England with an 
iron hand, and though the wars of the Roses, and the still 
more fatal conflict with the Puritans or middle class, exter- 
minated or drove out the remains of the Norman blood, and 
there is little, if any, in England at this time, the country is 
still governed by the traditions, the habits, in short, the sys- 
tem established by the old Norman aristocracy. Most of the 
great families became extinct, while the younger sons and 
others of broken fortunes emigrated to Virginia, and with the 
establishment of the commonwealth, very many of the Nor- 
man ancestry abandoned England. So many and so strong 
were the remnants of the old Norman families in Virginia, that 
they refused to recognize the commonwealth, and actually set 
at defiance the formidable power and iron will of Cromwell. 

But these remains of the old Norman aristocracy — that aris 
tocracy which for several centuries governed England — that 
have left their impress, their habits, their laws of primogeni- 
ture, their feudalistic customs, so deeply engraven on the 

12* 



274 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

English mind, that the aristocracy of the day, though entirely 
modern, and with scarcely any family connection with it, are 
able to govern the masses, through these habitudes, as abso- 
lutely as the Normans once did by the sword and the strong 
hand of arbitrary power, these descendants of the old Norman 
race in Virginia have changed completely about, and though 
their ancestors were the main supporters of kingly despotism, 
they are the originators and champions of democracy in 
America. 

In all the changes and mutations of human society, there is 
scarcely any parallel to this change of ideas in Virginia, or to 
this extraordinary transformation which has changed the de- 
scendants of the old Norman aristocracy into the firmest and 
most reliable defenders of democracy. Of course, the early 
colonists of Virginia were of all classes and conditions of 
English society ; not a few of them, perhaps, were kidnapped 
young peasants, without friends or relatives to protect them 
or to punish the base wretches who carried them over the sea 
and sold them here, as elsewhere, in the American colonies. 
But it is undoubtedly true that a larger, vastly larger body 
of " gentlemen" emigrated to Virginia than to any other col- 
ony, and as these were all cadets, or younger branches of the 
great houses in England, nearly all of which were Norman in 
descent, and nearly all of which in the direct line afterward 
perished in the wars of the commonwealth, it would seem 
equally certain that if there be any Norman blood anywhere, 
it must now be found, or mainly found, in Virginia. 

The cause of this transformation, this radical and extraordi- 
nary change of opinion, which has made the descendants of 
the proudest and most despotic aristocracy ever known the 
authors and main supporters of democracy, must be a potent 
one, and as far removed from the ordinary causes which, in the 
progress of time, modify men's opinions and habits, as the 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 275 

results themselves are extraordinary and without parallel. As 
has been remarked, all our ideas and mental habits are the 
result of circumstances, the external influences that surround 
us, the changed conditions of our existence, which give origin 
to new thoughts and new modes of mental action. And when 
we take these things into view and contemplate the changed 
conditions, the new and altogether different circumstances that 
surrounded these Virginia descendants of the cavaliers and 
gentlemen of England, then the causes are obvious — the new 
ideas that sprung up in men's minds, legitimate and consistent 
with the extraordinary and indeed unparalleled circumstances 
under which they lived. They were in juxtaposition with 
negroes, with an inferior race, with widely different and subor- 
dinate social elements, and new thoughts, new ideas, as well as 
altogether different habits, naturally and necessarily followed. 
They saw these negroes were different beings from themselves, 
not in color alone, or in other physical characteristics, but in 
their mental qualities, their affections, their wants, in short, in 
their nature and the necessities of their social life, their welfare 
and happiness, and indeed the welfare of this subordinate ele- 
ment, demanded corresponding action, with, of course, corre- 
sponding ideas and modes of thought. They saw that this 
negro was not artificially or accidentally, but naturally dif- 
ferent from themselves, that God himself had made him 
different and given him different faculties and different wants, 
and therefore designed him for different purposes, and that it 
was an imperative and unavoidable duty as well as necessity 
to adapt their social habits and legal and political institutions 
to this state or condition of fixed and unalterable fact. But 
this was not all, nor the limit to the new ideas that thus origin- 
ated in the changed conditions under which they were living. 
Their traditions, the mental habits of their old cavalier ances- 
try, the ideas they carried from the mother country, taught 



276 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

them to regard the person of a king as something quite sacred, 
and to whom an absolute and unquestioning obedience was 
always due, while the class of gentlemen, the nobility, or aris- 
tocracy, that more immediately surrounded royalty was deemed 
to be altogether superior and different from the vulgar multi- 
tudes that made up the people. The celebrated formula of 
Archbishop Laud, that " passive obedience and non-resistance" 
was the absolute and universal duty of the people to the will 
of the king, expressed with brevity and accuracy the prevalent 
sentiment of the cavaliers, and they demanded from their 
special retainers the same unquestioning submission which 
they themselves accorded to royalty. The ignorance of the 
great mass of the people on one hand, and the actual power 
and tyranny of the nobles on the other, sunk so deep into the 
common mind of England and other European people during 
the middle ages, that though many generations have passed 
since, the sentiment of superiority in one class and of inferior- 
ity in the other, remains yet, and in England at this day is 
nearly as potent as ever. 

But the descendants of the cavaliers in Virginia were placed 
face to face with facts that utterly exploded these factitious 
sentiments that had their origin in a certain condition of 
society, and not in nature or in the natural relations of men. 
They were in juxtaposition with negroes, Avith different and 
subordinate beings, human, it is true, like themselves, but dif- 
ferent human beings, just as pigeons, while birds equally with 
robins, are different birds, or as hounds, though dogs, were 
different dogs from spaniels or bull-dogs. This was a great, 
starting, fixed fact, that no amount or extent of sentiment, 
theory, or mental habit could explain away or modify, or avoid 
in any respect. They saw this fact daily staring them in the 
face ; they were compelled to recognize it, to legislate for it, 
or for these people, to adapt their social customs to it, in short, 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 211 

to conform to it, and therefore were forced to cast aside theii 
preconceived notions, the traditions and mental habits of their 
ancestors, all their ideas of loyalty to a creature like them- 
selves and of their own class-superiority which they had 
brought from the Old World. What was their fancied supe- 
riority over their own humbler brethren, when contrasted with 
this natural inferiority of the negro ? What was the accident 
of education, of wealth, of refinement of manners, or any 
other factitious, temporary, or accidental thing worth, which 
separated them from their less fortunate neighbors, when com- 
pared with the handiwork of. nature, with the fixed and im- 
passable barriers that separated them both from negroes ? 
What, in short, were the petty distinctions of human pride, 
vanity, and accident, in comparison with the ordinances of the 
Eternal? 

Such were the facts that confronted them, such the external 
circumstances that developed new ideas and new modes of 
thought in the colonists of Virginia, such the potent causes 
that changed the descendants of English cavaliers into the 
earliest, most consistent, and most reliable champions of de- 
mocracy in America. The same causes, to a certain extent, 
influenced the inhabitants of other colonies, and it will be 
found that in precise proportion to the amount and the fixed- 
ness of this negro element in any locality, there were clear, 
corresponding views of liberty and equality among white men. 
Indeed, this is as true now as ever before, and almost invari- 
ably there are sound and rational views of liberty and of dem- 
ocratic institutions in precise proportion to the presence, or 
imperfect and unsound notions in proportion to the absence, 
of this negro element. Those States like Mississippi, Texas, 
Arkansas, and Alabama, that have relatively the largest negro 
population, are the most decidedly and consistently democratic, 
while Massachusetts, Vermont, etc., with the fewest negroes 



278 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

among them, are the most unsound in these respects, and how- 
ever intelligent in regard to other things, are certainly behind 
most of the great American communities in political knowledge. 

South Carolina, and perhaps some others, may seem excep- 
tions to this very general truth, but if so in reality, it is owing 
to peculiar causes, such as the education of many of its people 
abroad, in Europe, and at the North, etc., but even as re- 
gards that State, so exceptional in many respects, land is more 
equally divided than in any other State, and where such a 
fact obtains, the general tendency to equality in citizenship 
must be strikingly manifested. 

The great revolutionary movement of 1776 gave full expres- 
sion to the new modes of thought, the grand ideas, the glorious 
truths thus developed in the mind of Virginia, and relatively in 
the other colonies, where this cause, this negro element had any- 
thing like a stationary existence. It was no accident or chance 
that made Mr. Jefferson the author of the great idea, or rather 
the exponent of the idea embodied in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the grand and immortal truth, that all white men are 
created equal, and therefore entitled to equal rights, or, as he 
expressed it, to "life, liberty, and happiness." True, some 
other Virginian might have done this, and possibly some mind 
in the Middle Provinces, New Jersey, or New York, might 
have formed a tolerably clear conception of this great fixed 
and unchangeable truth that underlies the whole superstruc- 
ture of our political society ; but no man in the Northern 
Provinces could have risen to this mental elevation at that 
period in our history ; indeed comparatively few are even 
now capable of it. Massachusetts and the neighboring colonies 
grasped the idea of independence with great clearness, and 
urged it with an earnestness, bravery, and indomitable perse- 
verance certainly unsurpassed, if equalled elsewhere, but it was 
independence of a foreign dominion, and not independence of 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 2*79 

foreign ideas or of a hostile system. They were without negroes, 
without any natural substratum in the social elements, without 
any test or standard to determine men's natural relations to 
each other, and clinging to the mental habits of their British 
ancestors, they were therefore incapable of forming those grand 
and truthful conceptions of equality which Mr. Jefferson, and 
Virginians generally, under the influences that have been stated, 
so clearly apprehended. The accidental and artificial distinc- 
tions of society — family influence, wealth, education, etc., were 
as in England, though, of course, not to the same extent — the 
standards, the tests, the land-marks of the political as well as 
the social order, and the phrase often used by New England 
writers of our own day, that " representation was inseparable 
from taxation," fully expressed the mental habits and imper- 
fect political conceptions of the Northern mind. In England, 
except the titled aristocracy, the House of Lords or Peerage, 
which pretends to rest on blood or birth (?), wealth alone gives 
rights. The man is nowhere, no part or portion, or element 
even of the political system. In every county where he hap- 
pens to have property, he has a vote, but if without property, 
he has no voice whatever, and, as observed, is not even an 
element of representation, as are the negroes of the South. 
Taxation and representation, therefore, are inseparable, so far 
as forms are concerned, in the British system, though, as a 
fact, it is the working classes, who are not represented at all, 
that must pay all the taxes in the end. The mental habits of 
the North, in 1776, were fashioned on this model; they saw 
only those accidental things that separate classes in England, 
as, wealth, education, etc., and though they had an earnest 
desire for liberty, this liberty was a vague, undefined, shadowy 
sentiment, rather than any precise idea resting on fact as in 
Virginia. The immediate want and common impulse of inde- 
pendence, however, impelled all parties to act harmoniously 



280 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

for its accomplishment, and though the grand truths presented 
by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence were far above 
the then intellectual standard of the North, it did not conflict 
with the mental habits of the Northern people sufficiently to 
interfere with the common object. But when that object was 
accomplished — when the foreign dominion was overthrown 
and the common independence secured, and a new political 
system was to be created, then a conflict of ideas was devel- 
oped that was found to be so grave, that many good and patri- 
otic men for some time feared it could not be compromised. 
The leading men of the North — the representative men — the 
men who desired independence from foreign domination, but 
with, at best, vague notions of liberty, or of a new political 
system — Hamilton, Adams, Morris, etc. — now came into serious 
conflict with the democratic ideas of Virginia. They desired a 
monarchy without a king, or a republic without the rule of 
the masses. The general notion was, the British model with- 
out its defects, or the British system without its corruptions, 
and so entirely were some wedded to this, that they declared 
it, with all its corruptions, the best government in the world. 

The leaders very generally assumed, as they often expressed 
it, that society was naturally divided into the few and the 
many — the educated minority, and the laboring majority — and 
as such was the actual social condition of the population as 
well as the mental habits of the leaders, it is not at all surpris- 
ing that they sought to found a government on such a basis. 
The agricultural population of the Northern and Middle States 
were then very ignorant indeed, when compared with the 
present. Feudalism had not been long overthrown in England 
or Europe, and the serf transformed into the peasant, and 
though the American farmer of IV 76 was a great advance over 
the latter, he still largely partook of that general apathy, sto- 
lidity, and ignorance which in all times, until now, in our own 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 281 

favored land, have distinguished the tillers of the soil. The 
large population at the North otherwise employed, the me- 
chanics, artisans, shop-keepers, laborers, etc., were generally, 
as in the mother country, without representation in the pro- 
vincial legislatures, and as the interests of the educated classes, 
the capitalists, merchants, lawyers, divines, etc., were supposed 
to be, and were in fact, in conflict with those of the former, 
they always desired strong governments to hold them in order. 
Indeed, the idea of mob ascendency, of anarchy, the wild rule of 
the rabble, was the constant terror of the Northern leaders, and 
in all the arguments of Hamilton, the Adamses, etc., this was 
put prominently forward. Their rhetorical formula was always 
the same — " the rule of the uneducated mass will degenerate 
into license and anarchy, from which the country can only be 
saved by the strong hand of some military chief, who, first a 
dictator, will finally don the purple, and the role so often 
played in the Old World will be repeated in the New." This 
notion and this reasoning was legitimate — the consistent result 
of the social condition as well as the offspring of the inherited 
traditions of the Northern mind. The capitalists, all those 
who inherited wealth, the " well-born" and educated class, in 
short, the few who had the power in their hands, naturally 
sought, to preserve it and to build up a strong government; 
which, while it specially benefited themselves, should always be 
able to " preserve order" — that is, while founded on existing 
social distinctions, was sufficiently strong to repress the efforts 
of the multitude to change the social condition. They had no 
negroes, no natural substratum in the social elements or na- 
tural distinctions of society. They had nothing before their 
eyes but the results of chance, of the accidents of life — noth- 
ing but wealth and education — nothing, in short, but the debris 
of the old societies — those class distinctions which in the Old 
World constitute the basis of the political and social order, 



282 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

and their mental habits, their opinions, their notions of govern- 
ment and its uses, were, of course, in accord with these things, 
and their minds were incapable of rising above the existing 
condition, of overleaping the barriers and escaping from the 
external circumstances that surrounded them. There were, 
doubtless, individual exceptions — some men who were deeply 
imbued with the grand idea promulgated by Jefferson in the 
Declaration of Independence. There were many in the Mid- 
dle States who had an imperfect but advancing conception of 
this glorious truth, and there was still a larger number, per- 
haps, who were groping hi darkness with a vague but earnest 
desire to embrace it. But the dominant thought, the prev- 
alent opinion, the general mental habit, was reflected by the 
representative men, the great Northern leaders, Hamilton, 
Adams, Otis, and their companions, who desired to found a 
government on the British model, which, though it should be 
a great improvement over the former, was to be based on the 
same foundation — for, to their minds, their mental habits, 
there was no other, or, at all events, no other safe basis for 
government. They were honest and patriotic men — men of 
gifted minds and large attainments — men sorely tried and 
tested by the hardships and sufferings of a seven years' war, 
through which they walked with their lives in their hands, and 
the scaffold always frowning on them in the distance, and the 
purity of intentions, the unselfish and patriotic desires of such 
men, should never be questioned. They could not rise above 
the circumstances that surrounded them ; they could not com- 
prehend the grand idea of Mr. Jefferson ; they saw before 
them only class distinctions, the rich and the poor, the educa- 
ted few and the toiling many, and they desired to build the 
government on the status quo, and therefore demanded a 
strong o-overnment, that should always be able to restrain the 
multitude and keep them in subjection to their " rulers." 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 283 

On the contrary, as has been stated, Virginia had cast off 
the mental habits of the Old World, the offspring had long 
since outgrown the traditions of their ancestors ; the descend- 
ants of English cavaliers had changed entirely about in their 
opinions, and the children of those who held to the doctrine of 
" passive obedience" and " non-resistance" declared that " re- 
sistance to tyrants was obedience to God." The cause or the 
causes of this wonderful transformation of opinion, this radi- 
cal change in mental habitudes, which has made the descend- 
ants of the supporters of royalty the originators and special 
champions of democracy in America, have been already con- 
sidered. 

The presence of the negro, the existence in their midst of a 
different race, was and is, and always must be, a test that 
shows us the insignificance and indeed nothingness of those 
artificial distinctions which elsewhere govern the world, and 
constitute the basis of the political as well as the social order. 

The importance of education, of cultivation, the refinement 
of mind and manners, the possession of wealth, of family influ- 
ence and social distinction, may all be duly appreciated, as all 
have their value or social consideration, but where there is a 
natural substratum of society, where a different and subordi- 
nate race are in juxtaposition, where negroes exist in any con- 
siderable number and in natural relation to the whites, then it 
naturally follows that the great natural distinctions fixed for- 
ever by the hand of the Almighty become the dividing hues 
and the fixed landmarks of the social order. 

This radical change in the mental habits of all brought face 
to face with the negro ; this instinctive consciousness of their 
own natural equality that accompanied their perception of the 
negro's inferiority ; in short, this development of the democratic 
idea to which Mr. Jefferson gave such grand expression in the 
Declaration of Independence, was and is accompanied by cor- 



284 KOBTH AND SOUTH. 

responding uniformity or harmony of interests. Agriculture, 
labor, production, was and is the one great dominating inter- 
est of Virginia and of all other communities made np of these 
diverse social elements. It is impossible to divide the interests 
of "master" and "slave" — of the white man and negro — 
when placed in natural relation to each other. It is the 
utmost interest of the master to treat his " slave" kindly, to 
care for him in sickness, to feed him well, and not to overwork 
or abuse him, and it is the utmost interest of the latter to be 
faithful to the former. It is a sort of partnership, a species 
of socialism, when the brain of one being and the hands of 
fifty other beings labor for the common good, for the general 
welfare ; and though possible exceptions are found where a 
brutal master beats and abuses his people, or a worthless 
" slave" runs off and hides in the swamp, both alike injure 
themselves, the master gets less work from his " slave," and 
the " slave" brings upon himself a corresponding evil. The 
so-called " non-slaveholder," if an agriculturist, has the same 
interest ; he is also a producer, and can not separate his inter- 
ests from the " slaveholder," which, perhaps, he was himself 
yesterday, and may be again to-morrow. If he be a mechanic, 
a lawyer, physician, or merchant, then, though not identified 
as a producer with the " slaveholder" or " non-slaveholder," 
and in a sense may be said to have different interests, these 
interests do not and can not conflict with the former, unless, 
as in the Northern States, government is called on to " pro- 
tect labor." But as government is confined to its legitimate 
sphere in Virginia and most other Southern States, and pro- 
tects all, without favors to any, there is then no conflict of 
interests, even when some are engaged in widely different pur- 
suits from the one great common interest of production. 
There is, therefore, universal harmony in Southern society ; the 
interests of master and " slave" are entirely indivisible, while 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 285 

those of the " non-slaveholder," if engaged in production, are 
similar, and as to all others, when they do not involve the 
government, though the pursuits or interests be widely differ- 
ent, there can be no social conflict. 

The ideas of Jefferson, Madison, and their cotemporaries 
were naturally formed by these circumstances, and after the 
revolutionary contest was over and a common government was 
to be created, they naturally proposed a system in harmony 
with the condition they represented. The North, as has been 
said, with no social substratum or natural distinctions, desired 
a government based on artificial distinctions, those separating 
classes, the same substantially as in England, though, of course, 
dispensing with a titled class, a king, and laws of primogeni- 
ture. It is true all the States had a few negroes, and they 
were all in their normal condition of so-called slavery, but 
their numbers were so inconsiderable that they did not influ- 
ence society or modify the mental habits of the Northern 
people. All over, and especially in the New England States, 
the same ideas were reflected by the representative men ; they 
wanted a government based on the status quo, on wealth, that 
should keep power in the hands of the few who then exercised 
it, and with sufficient force to hold the multitude in subjection. 
They proposed an executive for life, who should also appoint 
the governors of the States, that senators should serve ten 
years, and various other projects of similar character — all end- 
ing in or embodying the same common idea, that is, a govern- 
ment for the few at the expense of the many. 

The Southern men, on the contrary, proposed a government 
embodying their idea — the idea of democracy, and that should 
reflect the advanced opinion and living spirit of their own 
society, rather than a thing based on the model of Britishis^, 
and involving substantially the principles of the old European 
order. While they duly appreciated education, cultivation, 



286 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

and other accidental social distinctions, those whose ideas were 
advanced by juxtaposition with negroes, or with this natural 
line of demarcation, would not listen to the creation of a cen- 
tral government that tended in any respect to place power in 
the hands of a class, or that enabled the few, however indi- 
rectly it might be, to govern the many. The contest, both in 
the convention and before the people, assumed the form of a 
contest for a strong or a weak government — a government 
that should be supreme, like the British Parliament, or a gov- 
ernment^ delegated powers, which, while carefully denned, 
should be extremely limited in its functions or scope of action. 
But back of all this were the fundamental ideas— the British 
and the American — the spirit of the old societies and the spirit 
of the new order — of British oligarchy and of American 
democracy. 

Massachusetts and Virginia were respectively the head-quar- 
ters and embodiments of this conflict, this struggling of ideas, 
these tendencies to return to the past or to advance into the 
future, and it is as remarkable, perhaps, to find the former 
arrayed on the side of power and privilege, as that the descend- 
ants of the cavaliers should now be the champions of demo- 
cracy, and the advocates of the broadest liberty. But, as has 
been observed, our ideas are the results of accident, our opin- 
ions originate in the circumstances that surround us, and 
therefore while the mental habits of the North were only 
slightly modified from those of the mother country, those of 
the South, under wholly different conditions — conditions, in 
fact, utterly unknown to the English mind — were radically 
different. 

The Northern masses, as has been remarked, were then 
ignorant and helpless, and the agricultural class, though ad- 
vanced considerably beyond the same class in England, as the 
tillers of the soil had then barely escaped from the old feudal 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 287 

slavery or serfdom, were utterly powerless and without defend- 
ers in the great civil contest that succeeded the revolution. 
As against the advocates of strong government — those who 
represented the governing class — they could make no resistance 
whatever, except a physical and revolutionary one. The right 
of suffrage was very limited, and, indeed, as in England at this 
time, property and not population was the basis of representa- 
tion, and therefore the vast majority had no voice nor represen- 
tation whatever. Under such circumstances, it is obvious and 
beyond question that if a similar state of things had existed at 
the South, a government would have been formed on the British 
model — a republic, doubtless, but a bastard one — with powers 
so extensive and absolute that, as we now witness in Europe, 
nothing but revolution and physical force could ever enable 
the masses to overthrow it or to regain their natural liberty. 

But the planters of the South, unlike the farmers of the 
North, were an educated class, and fully competent to com- 
pete with the great leaders of the Northern oligarchy. Their 
ideas were widely advanced beyond those of the Northern 
farmer, but their interests were identical — those of agriculture, 
of production, of labor, of democracy, of manhood against 
privilege, and therefore they naturally fought the battle against 
strong government and class distinctions. The government 
actually adopted was, with the exception of a life tenure in 
its judicial department, substantially that which was origin- 
ally advised by the leading minds of the South, and which, 
instead of being supreme and absolute over the States, as 
desired by the Northern leaders, was, with certain well-defined 
exceptions, as utterly powerless and indeed disconnected with 
the States as the government of England, or any other foreign 
power. And perhaps no higher or more patriotic example can 
be found in all history than that of the graceful assent and ac- 
ceptance of the Northern leaders, when they consented to adopt 



288 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

the present system. As has been said, it was no selfish 01 
base spirit that prompted their desire for a strong government. 
They saw that the great body of the people were ignorant ; 
all history and all experience warranted them, as they believed, 
in retaining power in the hands of the few who then possessed 
it — in a word, they could not rise above the circumstances that 
surrounded them, or act otherwise than in conformity with 
their mental habits. But when fairly beaten in the convention 
and the great forum of popular discussion — for when the ideas 
of Jefferson and other Southern leaders were brought before 
the Northern masses, thousands of earnest and enthusiastic 
apostles of these new and glorious truths sprung up in every 
direction — then Hamilton and his associates generously assented 
to the adoption of the present system, and became its warmest 
advocates. They in no respect changed their views of govern- 
ment, but they became convinced that these views were then 
impracticable, and however unquestioned their ascendency at 
the North, that the Southern States would never consent to 
any union on such basis, and as a federal union on almost any 
terms was essential to the maritime States, they had the mag- 
nanimity to accede to the Southern or democratic view em- 
bodied in the j)i*esent government, and to become, as has been 
said, the warmest advocates for its adoption before the people. 
But if this patriotic and high-minded course of Hamilton and 
the great leaders of Northern opinion, which thus, it may be 
said, secured to the country and to the world the noblest gov- 
ernment ever known in human annals, is worthy of the esteem 
and admiration of posterity, what a stupendous and boundless 
benefit Jefferson, Madison, George Mason, and their associ- 
ates, who not alone assented" to, but who originated this gov- 
ernment, have conferred upon posterity, and indeed the race 
itself! 

For the first time in human history the grand idea of equal- 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 289 

ity, of an equal freedom or of equal rights, was declared to be 
the sole foundation of government, and made the vital principle 
of the political order, the starting-point of a new and more 
glorious civilization than was ever before dreamed of in the an- 
nals of mankind. Christ had promulgated the Divine command, 
" do unto others as you would have them do unto you," or 
recognize in all other men the same rights that you claim for 
yourselves ; but however faithful some may have been to this 
comiflBt in a religious sense, all the " Christian" governments 
that have ever existed, or that exist now, are in utter conflict 
with it, and therefore the government created in 1776, which 
embodied this glorious truth and clothed it with the flesh and 
blood and body and bones of material power, is unquestion- 
ably the most important worldly event that has ever hap- 
pened in human affairs. The revolt against England, its 
success, the subsequent independence, the creation of a new 
government, the beginning of an independent national exist- 
ence, might all occur without any radical change of principles 
or apy revolution of ideas, as indeed it is certain would have 
been the case if the views of Hamilton and other Northern 
leaders had been embodied in the new government. But the 
grand idea of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, 
and afterwards embodied in the federal government, was the 
starting-point of a revolution the greatest, most beneficent, 
most radical, and most important, that has ever happened in 
the history of the race — a revolution, moreover, that has gone 
on ever since, and must continue imtil all the governments of 
the Old World are overthrown, and society reorganized on the 
basis of the great, indestructible, and immortal truth that 
underlies our own — that fixed, natural, and unchangeable equal- 
ity which God has stamped forever on the organism of the 
race. If, therefore, we compare the services of Jefferson, 
Madison, and their associates with those of other men in other 

13 



290 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

times or other lands, it will be seen that they rise to a dignity 
and importance immeasurably greater than even the most ele- 
vated and most glorious among the benefactors of mankind. 
How paltry, in comparison, the Barons of Runymede, who 
overthrew a tyrant king that had oppressed their order ! How 
mean and selfish Brutus and his fellow-conspirators, when slay- 
ing the man they envied as well as feared ! How insignificant 
even Hampden and the great leaders of revolution in Eng land, 
who fought to defend themselves from the increasiri^^^pres- 
sion of a ruling class, when compared with Jefferson and his 
associates, who proclaimed an idea and organized a basis for 
the freedom of the race — for the equal rights of all whom God 
had made equal ! 

But great, and, when compared with what others may have 
done, immense as may be the benefits conferred by Jefferson 
and his associates on mankind, they only did their duty, and 
honestly represented the ideas and desires of their constituen- 
cies. Or, in other words, they merely expressed the opinions 
and reflected the mental habits that had their origin in the 
social condition, and followed as a necessary consequence of 
juxtaposition with negroes. If there had been no negroes in 
Virginia — no widely different race with its different capacities 
and different wants to provide for, in short, if there had been 
no natural distinctions, then those accidental and artificial 
things — wealth, education, family pride, etc. — which separate 
classes would have remained as elsewhere, the basis of politi- 
cal as well as social order. The descendants of English cava- 
liers, with their traditions and mental habits, would, perhaps, 
be somewhat liberalized, for their condition was widely 
changed from that of their ancestors, but without negroes, 
without the presence of natural distinctions, without those 
lines of demarcation fixed forever by the hand of God for 
society to repose upon, they would have remained the most 



tern. 

Si- 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 291 

aristocratic community in America. Neither Thomas Jeffer- 
son, nor any of the great controlling minds of the day, would 
have been heard of; or, at all events, would not have figured 
in that grand role where history has always placed them— the 
authors of a new idea and the foundersof a new political sys- 

They might have had, as Sir Thomas Moore and Algernon 

d Sfef^' indeed ' men of a11 a S es have had > feeDle ghnmier- 
mg^^He great truth promulgated in 1776. All who belong 
to the race or species are created equal ; and this great, fixed, 
and eternal fact, embedded in the physical and mental organ- 
ism of the race, has always been dimly perceived, but without 
juxtaposition with a different race, without the actual pres- 
ence of the negro, without the constant daily perception of 
those natural distinctions that separate races, in contrast with 
the artificial distinctions of classes of their own race, neither 
Jefferson nor any one else could have risen to the level of the 
grand truth embodied in the Declaration of Independence. 
They might have been distinguished actors in the great drama 
:>f independence, but that, as an historical event, would not 
have differed from a score of similar events where one people 
or portion of a people have separated and set up an indepen- 
dent government. The overthrow of the Moorish dominion in 
Spain — of the rule of the Spaniards in Holland — and the recent 
independence of Belgium, are parallel events, and many others 
might be named where foreign dominion has been overthrown 
and new governments set up without resulting in any change 
or progress of ideas, or without working out any fundamental 
revolution in human affairs. And if Jefferson, Madison, and 
their associates had had the same mental habits as Hamilton, 
Adams, and others of the North, it is obvious that independ- 
ence would not have been accompanied by a revolution in 
ideas. As has been said, a more liberal system than that of 



292 NORTH AND SOUTH. 

the mother country would have been established, but a new 
system, a radical and fundamental change in the political order 
— a new starting-point in the progress of the race — a govern- 
ment founded on the universal equality of the citizenship as 
actually established^ obvious would have been impossible. 
And as the public m^(^AaMitry can never rise above the 
level of the average opinionWRhe ordinary mental habits of 
the people, it is equally obvious that Jefferson and^k^Mpci- 
ates would never have done so, and therefore, if ther^Bw not 
been a condition of things that gave origin to new ideas and 
new habits of thought in the people of Virginia and elsewhere 
where these widely different social elements were in juxtaposi- 
tion, then it is equally obvious that the world would never 
have heard of them in 1776, and whatever time and circum- 
stances might have brought about in the future, no revolution 
at that time would have been possible. 

In conclusion, therefore, that is repeated in direct terms 
which has been rather inferred than directly stated. The pres- 
ence of the negro on this continent, our juxtaposition with a 
widely different and inferior race, and the existence of natural 
distinctions or natural lines of demarcation in human society, 
originating of necessity new ideas and modes of thought, has 
been the happiest conjunction that has ever occurred in human 
affairs, and has led directly to the establishment of a new sys- 
tem and a new civilization based on foundations of everlast- 
ing truth — the legal and political equality of the race, or of all 
those whom the Almighty Creator has Himself made equal. 



CHAPTER XjXII. 

THE ALLIANCE OF NORTHERN" AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. 

Ix the foregoing chapter it has been shown how " slavery," 
or the presence of the negro element in our midst, has given 
origin to the American idea of democracy — to more expanded 
and truthful conceptions of our true relations to each other — 
to mental habits which led Mr. Jefferson to promulgate the 
grand idea of equality in 1776 — to make that great movement 
a revolution of ideas as well as a war of independence — to ren- 
der the latter a mere preliminary for ushering in a new political 
system based on the equal rights of citizenship and the start- 
ing-point of a new civilization widely and radically different in 
its fundamental idea from anything ever before known in the 
political experience of mankind. It has been shown that Ham- 
ilton and Jefferson, the respective leaders and exponents of the 
opposing ideas and tendencies of the time, merely reflected the 
mental habits that belonged to the different social conditions 
then existing, or of the different constituencies which they rep- 
resented, and after the great contest for independence which they 
passed through harmoniously was closed and a new system of 
government was to be created, that the ideas of Jefferson gen- 
erally prevailed and the present government embodying these 
ideas was established. 

It has been shown, moreover, that both of these great men 
and those who acted with them were equally honest and equally 
patriotic ; that neither, nor any of them could rise above the 
level of opinion in their respective sections, for then they would 



294 THE ALLIANCE OP 

no longer have been representative men or able to influence the 
people; that the opinions of Hamilton reflected the mental 
habits of the North which clung to the forms and spirit of the 
British system founded on artificial distinctions, while Jeffer- 
son, reflecting with equal fidelity the mental habits that orig- 
inate in a different social condition — where a subordinate race 
is in juxtaposition — advocated a democratic system resting on 
the fixed and indestructible laws of nature. And in view of 
all these historical facts and inductive facts the conclusion was 
deemed irresistible that the presence of the negro element in 
our midst, the existence of a natural substratum in the social 
elements which thus secured the liberty of our own race — the 
legal and political equality of white men — was the happiest 
event or conjunction of circumstances that has ever happened 
in the history of mankind. But while the great northern lead- 
ers thus consented to the establishment of a democratic system 
they were driven on by their own tendencies as well as the 
mental habits of their people to neutralize its forces and to 
pervert its spirit. At that period suffrage was extremely lim- 
ited, while the agricultural "class in the Northern States — com- 
pared with the present — may be said to have been extremely 
ignorant. 

The northern or federal party were thus enabled to get 
possession of the new government and to give it such direc- 
tion as their opinions and interests doubtless seemed to de- 
mand. The President himself — the illustrious Washington — 
was without decided political convictions. His instincts and 
his family traditions, it is believed, inclined him in the direc- 
tion of the northern party, while the local tendencies of opin- 
ion — the general mental habits of the Virginians to regard the 
distinctions of race as the legitimate basis of political order — 
generally restrained him, and in the mighty conflict of opinion 
kept him in a neutral position. He formed his cabinet out of 



NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. 295 

wholly incongrous materials, made Jefferson Secretary of State, 
and Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury, and selecting other 
exponents of the conflicting opinions, sought to neutralize the 
contending forces by an equal selection of subordinates from the 
hostile camps. 

The public credit, the restoration of commercial confidence 
was the first and most pressing want of the country as well as 
of the new government, and in this Hamilton found a pretext 
for adoptingvthe British system of finance which he foresaw 
would enable his party to recover to a great extent the ground 
lost in the creation of the government, and in practice, what- 
ever might be the theory entertained, restore it or closely 
approximate it to his darling model — that favorite British sys- 
tem which he and his associates believed to be an embodiment 
of political wisdom. The idea of the British aristocracy that 
government is an instrument designed for their benefit was 
deeply implanted in the northern mind, and is so still. 

In England it is a practice which the idea has simply orig- 
inated in. Official employments, pensions and special legisla- 
tion or monopolies in England, embrace all or nearly all the 
ruling class, and therefore, the idea that government is estab- 
lished for their benefit necessarily follows. This idea of 
government is generally embraced by the northern mind even 
in our own times, and the habit of looking to this vast and 
beneficent power as the source of pecuniary benefits to the 
people, if not to a class, is almost universal among the northern 
people. 

Hamilton, brought up under the British system, was deeply 
imbued with it, and, placed in power, it was natural enough 
that he and his associates should construe the Constitution in a 
way to give it effect. The state debts that were contracted for 
carrying on the war were assumed by the new government and 
formed a basis for a national bank which was soon established, 



296 THE ALLIANCE OP 

and the rapid restoration of public credit that followed the 
restoration of public order and a settled society in a young 
and vigorous country was claimed by the federal writers as a 
proof of the wisdom of their policy and the extraordinary 
ability of their leader. 

Mr. Jefferson opposed tins policy from the beginning in all 
its aspects — the adoption of the British system of finance, the 
assumption of state debts, the creation of a national bank, in 
short, the entire programme of federal policy. He held with the 
state-rights democracy of our day, that the central government 
was a factitious and limited government, whose powers were 
derived, not from the collective people but from the people of 
the several or United /States, that the Constitution should be 
literally construed, and the practice under it strictly confined 
to the plainly enumerated objects, and, therefore, that the cre- 
ation of a national bank, assumption of state-debts, etc., were 
unconstitutional in principle and dangerous in practice. 

Hamilton and his party, on the contrary, held that the 
financial policy they adopted was not only the wisest that 
was possible under the circumstances, but that the consequen- 
ces likely to follow — the consolidation of power and prestige 
of the central government — would be of the greatest possible 
value to the people. Indeed, the old contest between Massa- 
chusetts and Virginia — the conflict of ideas — the warfare of 
widely different mental habits which preceded and ushered in 
the government were renewed and accompanied by a bitter- 
ness of spirit quite unknown in the former case. Hamilton, 
impelled by the opinions of the North, assumed in practice, if 
not in theory always, that the central government sprung from 
the collective or the American people instead of the people of 
the States, and was almost unlimited in its powers, and he 
doubtless believed that the more extended its powers, the 
safer and more stable would become the country and the 



NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. 29V 

more prosperous the people. He had failed to obtain such a 
government as he especially desired — a government after the 
English model— republican in form but aristocratic in fact, a 
government based on those artificial distinctions which the 
mental habits of the North were accustomed to regard as the 
only safe foundation, and now in power, with the prestige of 
the great name of Washington to support his policy, he doubt- 
less believed himself a patriot, and as performing vital service 
to his country and to posterity, when he thus construed the 
Constitution and consolidated the powers of the federal system. 

Indeed, the fear of the people — of a reckless and dis- 
orderly multitude — was the abiding sentiment of the great 
northern leaders, and the consolidation, power, and grandeur 
of a central government that should restrain them was the 
object of all their efforts. Thus, the very objects the federal- 
ists aimed at — doubtless from patriotic motives, for there being 
no laws of primogeniture there was no permanent class to be ben- 
efited by their policy — were the very things that Mr. Jefferson 
and his friends contemplated as the greatest danger to the 
country. Hamilton desired to construe the Constitution in a 
way to build up an enormous central power that should hold 
in check the tendencies to disruption and disorder, while Jef- 
ferson believed that the greater the assumption and the con- 
solidation of power in the federal system the greater the dan- 
ger to the freedom of the States and to the people. 

Or, in other words, the federalists believed that the more the 
central power was enlarged the greater the scope and strength 
of the federal government — the more certain were the States 
to be kept from disunion and the restless multitudes from 
anarchy, while Jefferson and his party believed that this 
assumption of power in the central government would result 
in the overthrow of the government itself if there was no 
other way of obtaining redress and of preserving on the part 

13* 



298 THE ALLIANCE OP 

of the States and the people of the States the liberties which 
they fought for in IV 76. Such was the great civil contest that 
sprung up under the administration of Washington, but which 
was constantly restrained by the presence of that great man, 
who, without any very decided leanings as regarded the parties 
to it, was, moreover, eminently practical and earnestly disposed 
to favor conciliation and peace rather than commit himself to 
the abstract opinions of either side. It was only, therefore, 
during the succeeding administration of Adams that this fun- 
damental conflict of ideas — this conflict which involved the 
very foundations of government itself, and which, back of the 
immediate actors that figured in the scene, originated in the 
different mental habits that spring of necessity from different 
social conditions, reached its culmination and prepared the way 
for that final solution which the great civil revolution of 1800 
afterwards accomplished. 

The federalists, or, more properly, the centralists, had con- 
Btrued the Constitution in a way to make the government in 
practice substantially what they believed it should have been 
in theory. They had adopted the British system of finance, 
had created a national debt and a national bank, which, as in 
England, was to be the agency for the deposit and disburse- 
ment of the public revenue, and, from the necessities of the 
case, a vast and overshadowing monopoly which was to hold the 
credit of the States, and of every individual in the States, at its 
mercy. In fact, the States were rapidly sinking into mere de- 
pendencies and subject provinces of the vast and overshadowing 
power of the central government, which, not content with its 
usurpations over the States — tending, in practice, to almost 
obliterate the lines of State sovereignty — even sought to 
strike down the liberty of the individual citizen, and in its 
alien and sedition laws to exercise absolute powers. These 
laws authorized the president to imprison and punish citizens 



NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. 299 

and others as his fears or caprices might dictate, with few, if 
any, greater safeguards for the citizen than in absolute govern- 
ments of the Old World.. 

The federal party embodied the British idea of government, 
and their notions of liberty differed little, if any, from those of 
the mother country. Liberty in England consists in the equal 
protection of person and property in an ordinary sense, but, 
as liberty, in fact, consists in an equal citizenship or an equal 
voice in the creation of laws that all are called on to obey, of 
course those who have no vote or voice in these laws are, to 
that extent, slaves. It was the policy of the federalists to 
limit this great natural right of suffrage, and in all the States 
where they were in the ascendency they sought to do so, as 
indeed was legitimate and consistent with their fundamental 
idea of government. Equally consistent and legitimate was 
their habit of expecting pecuniary benefits from government, 
for this, as has been said, was the practice in England, and the 
idea or theory that sprung from it was deeply engraved on 
the northern mind. While the federalists, therefore, sought 
to consolidate power in the hands of the federal government 
and to weaken the States, all the selfish and mercenary inter- 
ests of the day were naturally attracted to a party whose pub- 
lic policy thus favored and invited their cooperation. 

The conflict of labor and capital — the frightful antagonism 
between those whose labor produces all wealth and those who 
own the wealth produced by past generations of laborers — is at 
the bottom of all the revolutions and civil commotions of 
modern times, for it involves the whole subject of government, 
as well as all those mighty social evils which so disfigure and 
deform European society. In England this conflict has, in one 
sense, reached its utmost limit — while in another respect it 
may be said to be least active or less palpable than anywhere 
else. 



300 THE ALLIANCE OP 

The few who own the wealth produced by past generations 
^are the wealthiest in the world, while the many who produce 
all the wealth of the present are undoubtedly the poorest ! 

Those who psrodmdB every thing enjoy nothing, while those 
who produce nothing enjoy every thing ! A political econo- 
mist of great eminence has made an estimate of the present 
wealth of England, and declared that, if equally divided, every 
man, woman, and child in England would have ten thousand 
pounds, or fifty thousand dollars, and yet supposes that there 
are ten millions of people who never own a dollar beyond their 
daily support ! The land is owned by some thirty-five thou- 
sand proprietors, many of whom have large parks containing 
many thousand acres, filled with game and left untilled, while 
millions of men and women of their own race — their own kind 
— are without a single foot of that which God designed for the 
common sustenance and comfort of all ! Education, moral 
development, and happiness must go hand in hand with these 
things, of course ; indeed, it is a truth that should always be 
recognized when estimating the well-being of masses of men, 
that their moral and physical well-being are necessarily in- 
separable. 

No one, however ignorant or prejudiced in favor of British- 
ism, or " British liberty," can suppose for a moment that such 
stupendous results as these, or that such a social condition as 
that 6f England, could ever be brought about by natural causes. 
They are all of the same race, with the same natural capacities 
as well as wants, and if there be any difference, or any natural 
inferiority, it is within the governing class, whose intermarriage 
among the landed aristocracy has deteriorated their blood, and 
reduced them below the normal standard. 

It is the government, therefore — the contrivance or political 
machine which has worked out these tremendous results — that 
has dug this mighty chasm between beings whom the Almighty 



NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. 301 

has created alike, and therefore forbidden any governmental 
distinction. 

The notion that government should benefit their condition, 
therefore — should make them richer and happier — originates in 
the fact itself in England, and those who, like the federalists, 
formed all their ideas of government after the British model, 
sought naturally enough to wield it for these supposed bene- 
ficent purposes. There was the same social conflict, in a de- 
gree, at the North as in England. It was the interest of the 
capitalist or employer to get all the labor possible with as 
little expense as might be, while the laborer would naturally 
seek to get as high wages as possible, and in return give as 
little labor as possible. 

The capitalists, the men of wealth, the professional classes, 
merchants, indeed all classes of Northern society, except the 
agricultural class, were attracted to the federal party, and, in 
addition, speculators and projectors of every kind were natu- 
rally drawn in the same direction. These classes, embracing 
all the wealth, and cultivation, and social influence of the day, 
rallied in support of the federal party, which, with the govern- 
ment in its hands, with the prestige of power, and nearly all 
of the intellectual men of the time on its side, was irresistible, so 
far as the North was concerned. The producing classes, the 
farmers and laborers — those only that were naturally opposed 
to its policy, or whose real interests were in conflict Avith its 
policy — were then comparatively helpless. The right of suf- 
frage was exceedingly limited, and though the agricultural 
class largely outnumbered the others, they were ignorant, 
without guides, and indeed quite helpless in the grasp of the 
federal leaders. The federal party, as has been stated, had, by 
so construing the constitution, usurped power that rendered 
the government substantially such as they originally desired to 
establish, and the masses, without intelligent leaders, were 



302 THE ALLIANCE OF 

powerless to resist. And any one intelligently contemplating 
the condition of things in the Northern States during the 
administration of the elder Adams, must be irresistibly forced 
to the conclusion that the masses — the laboring and producing 
classes — were wholly unable to relieve themselves from the 
oppressions of this party, short of a physical revolution and an 
appeal to arms. They were largely in the majority, but the 
right of suffrage being mainly confined to property-holders, la- 
borers, mechanics, artisans, etc., were, as in England, disfran- 
chised ; while the agricultural classes, though greatly advanced, 
no doubt, beyond the same classes in the Old World, were 
yet extremely illiterate and ignorant, and therefore powerless. 
The policy of the federalists was absolutely the same as in Eng- 
land — that is, the government was a machine or instrument 
through which the few who produce nothing were to enjoy 
every thing, and the many, who produce every thing, were to 
enjoy nothing. In a new country, with cheap lands and virgin 
soils, it might be many centuries before the awful results now 
manifested in England could be worked out, but the process 
was the same — the same causes were in operation, and the 
same results would surely follow — differing only in degree. 

Nor, had the Union been confined to the Northern States, 
was there any reasonable prospect before the masses of over- 
throwing the oppression foisted on them, by a resort to revo- 
lution and physical force. They were the immense majority, 
it is true, but without leaders, without education or intelli- 
gence, or prestige of any kind, their doom was sealed, their 
subjection certain, their slavery inevitable. It would have 
been the old story over again — the revolt of the people against 
their oppressors in 1776 to be again subjected to other oppres- 
sions in 1796 — a change from one master to another; though, 
doubtless, as all the efforts of the race have been in the direc- 
tion of progress, a certain advance towards a better condi- 



NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. 303 

tion. But, fortunately for mankind and the cause of free 
institutions, a widely different state of things existed in Vir- 
ginia and other States in the South. 

As fully considered in another place, the negro element was 
here stationary, and in numbers so considerable that rules and 
regulations were necessary in regard to it. It had to be pro- 
vided for ; its capacities, its wants, its necessities, in short, 
harmonized with the wants and well-being of the dominant 
race. The colonial legislatures, as the State legislatures of the 
present day, were constantly called on to enact laws and 
establish regulations for this subordinate social element, as 
well as for themselves, and therefore habits of thought grew up 
that gave them widely different notions of government from 
those of the people in the North. 

There was no social conflict ; all had the same interests, and 
if one man inherited wealth, and another had nothing but his 
labor to depend on, they never came in conflict, for the former 
never sought the aid of the government to benefit himself at 
the expense of his less fortunate neighbor. In the North, if a 
citizen inherited ten thousand dollars, he invested it hi some 
special corporation — a bank, a manufacturing company, or some- 
thing else — that had its origin in special legislation, and perhaps 
doubly increased his income, which, of course, was drawn 
from the laborer, the producer, the class that creates all 
wealth. 

In Virginia, on the contrary, if a citizen inherited ten thou- 
sand dollars, he invested it in lands, in the industrial capacities 
of negroes, in short, in labor ; and though he may never have 
labored an hour with his own hands himself, he became of 
necessity a producer, with the same common, universal, and 
indivisible interests of all other producers and laborers, and 
therefore never sought the aid of government. Indeed, the 
government could not nor can not at this time legislate for the 



304 THE ALLIANCE OF 

benefit — special benefit — of the planter of the South, or the 
farmer or producer at the North ; and from the day it*was 
created to this moment, there has never been an act of Con- 
gress or of the federal government that specifically benefited 
the South. Congress might, it is true, " protect" cotton or 
wheat, or other of the great staples which the producers of 
both sections furnish, but it would be a " protection" quite as 
useless to the parties interested as it would be harmless in its 
results to other classes and interests among us. 

The clear mind of Jefferson grasped these bonds of indus- 
trial interest between the southern planter and northern far- 
mer — the slaveholder of the South and the laborer of the 
North — at a very early period, and declared them " natural 
allies" in the great conflict then pending. The planter or 
" slaveholder" of the South asked nothing from government but 
its protection. He had grown up under a condition of things 
where there was no social conflict of any kind. There were no 
opposing interests — no class distinctions — nothing to appeal to 
his selfishness or to blind his judgment. Society was natur- 
ally divided, not into the rich and poor as elsewhere, but into 
whites and negroes, and, as the latter was owned^by the for- 
mer there was no contradiction, no motive or possible induce- 
ment to employ the government as an instrument for the 
special benefit of any body. The old European notion of 
government, therefore, that clung and still clings to the north- 
ern mind, that government should regulate the religion, the 
commerce, the industry, etc., of the country, was exploded, 
and the modern and true American idea that it should simply 
protect all alike and give favor to none became the general 
idea of the populations of the South ; and, indeed, of the great 
agricultural populations of the Central States so far as it then 
could find expression. And, when this was the general notion 
of Virginia and other States at the South as regards their own 



NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. 305 

legitimate government, of course they would not permit the 
federal and factitious government resting on delegated and 
strictly defined limitations of power, to be perverted in its 
spirit and transformed by its practice into a machine, as in 
England, to benefit others at their expense. The Southern 
States, therefore, especially Virginia and Kentucky, met in 
their legislatures, consulted with other States, and, in the cel- 
ebrated Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, made a 
declaration of principles, and pledged themselves to a policy 
that will always serve as the true landmarks of our State and 
federative systems so long as the republic, or, indeed, Amer- 
ican freedom itself lasts to bless the world and illuminate man- 
kind. 

These resolutions offered a common platform for the agri- 
cultural States — for the producing classes of all sections — for 
the masses, the millions, in short, for all men who believed in 
the American idea of government and demanded equal rights 
for all and favors for none. 

Thus the Middle States, the great agricultural populations 
of the North, who, unaided and alone were powerless in the 
grasp of the federal party, led as that party was by the intel- 
lect, and sustained by the wealth and social prestige of the 
North, found themselves naturally allied with the agricultural 
populations of the South who were led by men quite the 
equals in general attainments, and vastly the superiors in polit- 
ical knowledge, of the great northern leaders. These men — Jef- 
ferson, Madison, George Clinton, and their associates — had 
already conquered in the great intellectual contest that had 
preceded the creation of the government, and though in the 
great battle now pending, the centralists occupied vantage 
ground, for their banks, state debts, and consolidated federal 
powers, attracted to their standards all the selfish interests and 
mercenary influences in the country, the former again carried 



306 THE ALLIANCE OP 

the day, and in the great civil revolution of 1800 restored the 
government, as Mr. Jefferson expressed it, to " the republican 
tack." This restoration of the federal government to its orig- 
inal purposes was surely second only to the revolution of 1776 
in importance, and without it it is obvious that the fruits of 
the former must measurably have been lost. As has been seen, 
the northern masses were at that time wholly unable to con- 
tend with the opposing minority which embraced within its 
ranks the wealth, talent, education, and social influence of the 
day. And though largely in the majority as regards numbers, 
it was powerless even as regards physical force, for it was 
without leaders to direct its energies or to cope successfully 
with that brilliant array of able and accomplished civilians and 
soldiers that gathered about the administration and directed 
the councils of the federal party. If the rule of the federal- 
ists in the course of time became personally oppressive — if that 
personal " freedom" which in England permits the subject to 
enjoy locomotion as he pleases and protects his person from 
violence were stricken down, then it may be supposed that 
the northern masses would have resisted, and, perhaps, in the 
progress of the future have overthrown such government. 

But the government actually established by the federalists — 
by the false construction of the Constitution, and the usurpa- 
tions in practice which would have kept the producing classes 
— the toiling millions — in the same or similar subjection to a 
ruling oligarchy, as is now witnessed in England, and which, 
in the course of time, would render them equally abject, pov 
erty-stricken, ignorant, and miserable, would seem to be, in 
view of all the circumstances then existing, beyond their power 
to change or reform by a civil revolution like that which did 
occur in 1800, or to overthrow by the strong hand of physical 
force. The great civil revolution, therefore, when able and 
accomplished statesmen of the South, the equals in talent, and 



NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. 307 

vastly superior to any class in Christendom in political knowl- 
edge, led the northern producing classes through the great con- 
flict then pending, and overthrowing the centralists restored 
the government to its original purity and simplicity, must be 
deemed, as has been said, only second in importance to the 
great event of 1776. 

And the social condition in the South, the so-called slavery, 
which invariably renders the southern planter the natural 
ally of the northern farmer, must be considered, as it obvi- 
ously is in fact, the sole, or at all events the leading cause for 
the successful working of democratic institutions, as it was 
originally the sole and unquestionable cause that originated 
the great American idea of government embodied in the Dec- 
laration of Independence. Nor are the consequences of that 
condition of so-called slavery — the existence of a subordinate 
social element at the South which has thus, with more or less 
directness, worked out the equality, freedom, and happiness 
of the laboring classes of the North — limited to our own land 
or to our own people. As has been observed, the conflict of 
capital and labor is the great question of the day — the question 
that is at the bottom of all the European revolutions of mod- 
ern times, and its solution must, of necessity, involve the de- 
struction of every government now in existence except our 
own. Capital in the old world has the education and intelli- 
gence as well as the government on its side against the people, 
and the simple fact that, in half of the American States, capital 
and labor are* united, inseparable, and indissoluble, is of tran- 
scendent importance to the future liberation of the laboring 
millions of Europe. 

Here — for the first time in the experience of the race — wealth, 
cultivation, and intellectual power are arrayed on the side of 
production and in defence of the rights of labor, not by a 
warfare on northern capital, as it is sometimes charged, but by 



308 THE ALLIANCE OF NOETHEEN, ETC. 

demanding that government shall not legislate for the latter at 
the expense of the former. Nor is the subordinate element — 
the inferior race in our midst, which, in the providence of God 
has thus been made the mediate or immediate cause of such 
vast and boundless benefit to the freedom, progress, and well- 
being of the superior race — without participation in these ben- 
efits. God has designed all His creatures for happiness, and this 
happiness is always secured when they are in their true posi- 
tion, and in natural relations to each other ; and when the con- 
dition of the negro is compared with his African state — the 
existing population with their African progenitors — then it is 
seen that the progress and happiness of the inferor has 
marched pari passu with those of the superior race. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 

There are something like twelve millions of negroes in 
America, on the mainland and the adjacent islands — as large 
a proportion, perhaps, in view of their industrial adaptation, as 
there are of the Caucasian or dominant race ; and, therefore, 
whatever may be the contingencies or the wants of the future, 
there would seem to be no necessity now for any further im- 
portation of these people. Of the twelve millions, there are 
between four and five millions in their normal condition at the 
South. There are, perhaps, half a million of so-called free 
negroes, about equally divided between North and South. 
There are about four millions in Brazil, Cuba, and Porto Rico of 
so-called slaves, but really in a widely different condition from 
that common to the South. Finally, tfcfl PfcFbetween three 



■ ne< 



and four millions of so-called free Tiegroes in the tropics, in 
Jamaica, Hayti, and the other islands, with some thousands, 
however, scattered about the coast towns, and in the terra cali- 
ente of the mainland. The free negro, in the American Union, 
as has been stated, is destined to extinction. It is only a 
question of time, when this doom will be accomplished. The 
census returns, and the universal experience, recognize this 
deplorable truth ; but beyond them, and independent of any 
demonstration whatever, their extinction is a necessity — is as 
legitimate and unavoidable as any other effect or effects linked by 
inevitable necessity with their predetermining cause or causes. 
They are not merely turned loose — abandoned to their fate 



310 THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 

without masters or protectors to look after them, but they are 
assumed to be Caucasians, black-white men, creatures like 
ourselves, with the same capacities, and the same wants, and 
though no one assumes to do so individually, society forces 
them to live up to the theory in question, and, as this is impos- 
sible, as no human force or forces can set aside the ordinances 
of the Eternal, it destroys them. If, for example, laws were 
passed to change the color, the hair, the form of the limbs, or 
any physical quality of the negro, and the whole power of the 
State was brought to bear upon him to compel him to be like 
the white man in these respects, it is obvious that nothing 
could be accomplished save the destruction of the unhappy 
creature. The capacities, the wants, the moral and intellectual 
nature of the negro, differ from our own to the precise extent 
that his physical nature or bodily structure differs from ours, 
and, therefore, Northern society, or rather that monstrous and 
malignant philanthropy which in its ignorance and blind impiety 
deems itself kind and beneficent, necessarily destroys the object 
of its solicitude when it strives to give him the rights of the 
white man, or to force him to change his moral and intellec- 
tual nature SJM^^ntfie white man. 

If all the children of ™ age of ten, in a given community, 
were turned from their homes into the street and left without 
their natural protectors to care and provide for their wants, 
they would perish in time, of course, if we could suppose them 
to remain at this age or condition. But if, in addition to this 
abandonment of these helpless ones, a theory were set up that 
they had all the capabilities of the adult, and should, therefore, 
enjoy the rights and perform the duties of men and women, 
they would, of necessity, perish still more rapidly. If a dog, 
or horse, or other domestic animal were turned loose or lost 
its owner, it would sooner or later perish, but if some deluded 
" nhilanthropist" should set up the assumption that his bull- 



THE FUTUEE OF THE NEGRO. 311 

dog, for instance, was entitled to the rights and should enjoy 
the life of the hound, and therefore attempt to force it to ex- 
hibit the same qualities, the scent, sight, or swiftness that God 
has given the latter, he would, of course, destroy the poor 
thing with far greater rapidity than if he had simply turned it 
loose to shift for itself. Similar results do attend and must 
attend that malignant philanthropy and blind impiety which 
would impose the rights or force the duties of the white man 
on the differently organized and differently endowed negro. 
In Virginia and Maryland he is simply turned loose without 
any guide or protector or white man's rights whatever, not 
even the right of free locomotion common to British subjects, 
and, therefore, lives longer, for there is no especial violence 
attempted — no direct effort made to force him to live out the 
life or to manifest the nature of widely different beings. But 
in Canada and Massachusetts, where white manhood is held 
so cheaply that the negro is supposed to be entitled to the 
same rights, and direct efforts are made to compel him to ful- 
fill the same duties, where the little Prince of Wales in hjs 
recent visit declared that lie would iiQ^M^D^mz^kgff/tKF 
tinctions of race that originate inJJho u<in<piKne Eternal 
and are fashioned by the hanct*^n Omnipotence, which no 
amount or extent of human force, folly, impiety, or crime can 
obliterate even to the millionth part of a primordial atom, and 
which millions of years after those paltry distinctions of human 
invention which transform this common-place lad into an 
imaginary superiority over his fellows shall have disappeared, 
then he rapidly and miserably perishes. 

The tendency to extinction, therefore, is always accelerated 
or diminished in exact proportion as " impartial freedom" is 
thrust upon him — as he is permitted " to enjoy equal rights" 
with the white man, or as ignorance and folly, in their blind 
and cruel kindness and exterminating goodness, strive to force 



312 THE FUTUEE OP THE NEGRO. 

him to manifest the nature and live the life of a different being. 
This assertion, doubtless, startles the reader, as it once cer- 
tainly would have startled the writer himself. We are all so 
accustomed to mental habits directly in conflict with this asser- 
tion, that it is somewhat difficult to lift our minds out of them 
and to take true cognizance of the facts, and inductive facts, 
that daily confront us. 

The negro is a different being from the white man, and 
therefore, of necessity, was designed by the Almighty Creator 
to live a different life, and to disregard this — to shut our eyes 
and blindly beat our brains against the decree — the eternal 
purpose of God himself, and force this negro to live our life, 
necessarily destroys him, for surely human forces can not dom- 
inate or set aside those of Omnipotence. Nor is the negro the 
sole sufferer from this blind impiety, this audacious attempt to 
disregard the distinctions and to depart from the purposes of 
the Almighty Creator. The large " free" negro populations of 
Maryland and Virginia are the great drawbacks on their pros- 
perity, .and if the hundred thousand or so of these people 
(^Mj^mlairtedb^^e same number of white laborers, or, 
indeed^lrMB ■■ ■:if.,'fcfc£" i slave" negroes, a wide and benef- 
icent change woiu^raPH^flfllow. Furthermore, they are 
vicious as well as idle and non-productive, and every one of 
them a disturbing force — a dangerous element — which, in con- 
junction with those hideous wretches maddened with a mon- 
strous theory like those miscreants at Harper's Ferry, are 
always liable to be made instruments of fearful mischief. The 
consequences of the fifty thousand " free" negroes in juxtaposi- 
tion with the three millions of white people in New York are 
barely perceptible, but as scarcely one in fifty of these people are 
engaged in productive labor, they are a considerable burden 
upon the laboring and producing ctizens. True, they do not 
see it or feel it — and multitudes of honest and laborious citi- 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 313 

zens in the rural districts are profoundly interested in the 
" cause of freedom," while thus contributing a certain portion 
of each day's labor for the support of some fifty thousand non- 
productive negroes. Again, in the cities and larger towns, 
the vices and immoralities of the whites have an extended as- 
sociation with this free negro element. 

The negro in his normal condition has attractive qualities. 
He is not degraded, for none of God's creatures are naturally 
degraded, and his fidelity and affection for his master and his 
master's family, sometimes reach a dignity that would reflect 
honor on the white man. Nor is there any prejudice or 
hatred between the races when they are in true relation to 
each other. One may travel for months, perhaps years, in the 
South, and never witness a collision or the slightest disturb- 
ance between them ; but, on the contrary, they will often see 
a kindly feeling displayed even when the negro is not owned 
by those who exhibit it. The negro is in a social position and 
relation that accords with his nature, his wants, the purposes 
that God has adapted him to, in short, lives out his own life, 
and therefore, all that is good, that is J^lthvin his moral 
nature as in his physical nature, is^TMjl Rested. But at 
the North, where he is thrust from his natural sphere and 
forced to live out the life of a different being, he exhibits the 
same moral defects that he does in his physical nature. He 
is a social monstrosity — and though his subordinate nature 
renders him less likely to commit great crimes than the supe- 
rior white man, the tendencies to petty immoralities are almost 
universal. Some, indeed, bred up in well-regulated families, 
and others who are nearly white, escape the general demorali- 
zation of this people, but the instances are probably few — the 
moral defects march hand in hand with the physical, and, as 
they tend continually to disease and death, so, too, do they 
tend to universal immorality. And as it would be strange, 

14 



314 THE FUTURE OP THE NEGRO. 

indeed, if Providence visited the sins of the dominant race on 
these poor creatures alone, they are extensively associated, as 
has been observed, with the vices of the whites. With feeble 
perceptions of moral obligations, with strong tendencies to 
animal indulgences of every kind, and an utter repugnance to 
productive labor, they congregate in the cities ; and the social 
exclusion to which they are exposed, as well as the absence of 
moral sentiment among them, renders them, to a wide extent, 
the instruments of the vices and corruptions of the whites. 

Thus, it is not alone the negro's non-productiveness — the bur- 
den, the absolute tax imposed on the laboring classes — but the 
demoralization of this abnormal element, of this social monstros- 
ity, that is inflicted on society as the legitimate and unavoidable 
punishment for having placed the negro in an abnormal condi- 
tion. God created him a negro — a different and inferior being, 
and, therefore, designed him for a different and inferior social 
position. Society, or the State, has ignored the work of the 
Almighty, and declared that he should occupy the same posi- 
• tion and live out the life of the white man ; and the result is, the 
laboring aiujq^^ttung classes are burdened with his support, 
and society, tos^Wtam.€xtent, poisoned by his presence. To 
the negro it is death — necessarily death, as it always must be to 
all creatures, human or animal,forbidden to live the life God has 
blessed them with, or to live in accord with the conditions He 
has imposed on them. The ultimate doom of the poor crea- 
tures, therefore, is only a question of time. The great " anti- 
slavery" imposture of our times, which has rested on popular 
ignorance of a few fundamental truths in ethnology and politi- 
cal economy, has at last culminated, and few, if any more of 
these people will ever be turned loose, or manumitted as it has 
been called. Whether they will be restored to society and to 
usefulness at the North may be doubted, but necessity as well 
as humanity will doubtless prompt such a policy at the South ; 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 315 

but, in any event, it is absolutely certain that, as a class, they 
will become extinct, and a hundred years hence it is reasonable 
to suppose that no such social monstrosity as a " free negro" 
will be found in America. 

But another and far more embarrassing question is pre- 
sented by free negroism outside of the American Union, and 
that now confronts us in Cuba, Jamaica, Hayti, Mexico, and 
on the whole line of our Southern border. This is the danger, 
the sole danger of the so-called slavery question, and it involves 
possibilities that are fearful to think of, though scarcely dan- 
gerous at all if our own people were truly enlightened on the 
general subject. 

In a previous chapter it has been shown how climatic and 
industrial laws govern our mixed populations, and, without the 
slightest interference of government, the negro element goes 
just where its own welfare as well as that of the white citizen- 
ship and the general interests of civilization demand its pres- 
ence. This law of industrial adaptation has carried it from 
northern ports into the Central States, from the latter to the 
Border States, and is now, with even increased activity, carry- 
ing it from Virginia, etc., into the Gulf States, and thus per- 
mitted to go on, with all obstacles removed from the path of 
its progress, a time will come when the negro population of 
the New World will be within the centre of existence where it 
was created, and where the Almighty Creator has provided for 
its well-being. A sectional party in the North, taking advantage 
of popular ignorance, and actually enacting a law prohibiting it 
to exist anywhere where white labor is best adapted, could not 
by that sole act do any practical injury to the social order of 
the South. Such an act would indeed be a violation of the spirit 
of the federal compact, and, as an adjunct of the hostile policy 
of the foreign enemies of republican institutions, its moral bear- 
ings would be full of mischief; but, disconnected or disunited 



316 THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 

with the British free negro policy, it would be harmless, for, 
as Mr. Webster once declared, it would only be a " reenact- 
ment of the will of God." But, as already observed, the dan- 
ger of this whole question lies beyond the boundaries of the 
American Union, and if it be true that we have a considerable 
number in our midst disaffected to democratic institutions — 
then every man opposed to the existing condition, or so-called 
slavery, is, however ignorant of it, to a certain extent an in- 
strument of the enemies of these institutions ; and the policy of 
any such party, as well as the action of any among us, whether 
in concert with, or independently of any such party, for the 
same common object or end, becomes treason, and treason the 
most wicked and revolting that the mind can conceive of, for 
it involves the natural supremacy of the white man over the 
negro, as well as the permanence, peace, and prosperity of 
our republican system. The Spanish, still less the Portuguese 
conquerors of America, have never exhibited that healthy nat- 
ural instinct which preserves the integrity of races, so univer- 
sally as the Anglo-Americans have done. They have inter- 
mixed and amalgamated with the Indians or Aboriginals with 
little hesitation ; and though they have always manifested 
a certain repugnance to an equality with the still more subor- 
dinate negro, they have largely intermixed, and therefore, ex- 
tensively deteriorated and ruined themselves. 

In Brazil there are nearly four millions of negroes that are 
called slaves, but held more by the bonds of pecuniary interest 
than they are by nature, as with us. There is a large mulatto 
and mongrel population, often highly educated, possessing vast 
wealth, with, of course, all the advantages that these things 
give when society does not rest on natural distinctions. A 
mulatto or mongrel in Virginia or Mississippi may be left to 
take care of himself, or be a so-called freeman, but lie can 
never be a citizen — can never in any thing whatever be legally 
endowed with the social attributes, any more than he can with 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 317 

the natural attributes, of the white man. But in Brazil, and, 
indeed, in Cuba, the mulatto, mongrel, or negro may by law 
become a citizen, may own slaves, may, in short, be artificially 
invested with all the "rights" by the government that nature— 
that God himself has withheld or forbidden. The white man 
in Cuba is a slave to a foreign dominion, and this same foreign 
power, while it withholds from him his natural rights, forces the 
negro by the same arbitrary power into legal equality with 
him. The arbitrary force is less in Brazil, but the low grade 
of manhood in the white element, its extensive affiliation and 
consequent deterioration with the subject race, has rendered 
them incapable of either comprehending liberty or of enjoying 
free institutions. The negro that was a slave once becomes a 
citizen, with all the legal rights of the white man, and, if he 
inherits wealth, educates his children, etc., then these artifi- 
cial and accidental things, instead of the distinctions of nature, 
become the line of demarcation in society. If a planter has a 
family of children by his negro slaves, and educates them and 
leaves them his wealth, then they become influential citizens, 
makers of the government, etc., and leaders of fashion, perhaps, 
in Rio Janeiro and other cities. The white man is so degraded, 
the instinct of race so perverted, the sense of superiority so 
obtuse — in short, the nature of the Caucasian so completely 
corrupted by extensive affiliations with the subject race, that 
natural distinctions are no longer a line of demarcation, and 
wealth, accident, etc., as in Europe, and as the Federalists once 
desired, are the basis of the political and social order. It is 
somewhat different in Cuba, for here the American instinct of 
race and the high appreciation of manhood common to all 
societies based on the order of nature have a certain influence. 
But even in Cuba, in our own neighborhood, within a few 
hours' sail of our coast, society rests upon an artificial basis, and 



318 THE FUTURE OF THE TSTEGRO. 

what is called slavery rather involves pecuniary considerations 
than a question of races. 

The social conditioD, therefore, or so-called slavery may be 
overthrown any day in Brazil or Cuba, for, resting on a basis 
of property instead of the distinctions of nature common with 
us, there is no permanent security for the social safety, and in 
view of the policy of England on this subject and its influence 
in Brazil, we should not be surprised at any moment to hear 
that a revolution had broken out, and that slavery was over- 
thrown in every portion of the Brazilian empire. This result 
which may happen at any moment, and which circumstances 
alone may protract for an indefinite period, would seem to be 
ultimately inevitable — for the white element is every day be- 
coming more deteriorated and feeble ; and, without the mental 
and moral power, without the healthy instinct of the race to 
buoy it up amid such corrupt and corrupting tendencies, with- 
out that high sense of manhood which makes the American 
" slaveholder" the perfect type and complete embodiment of 
the strength and power of the great master race of man- 
kind, without, in short, the natural superiority of the white 
man to restrain this negro and mongrel population, it is cer- 
tain sooner or later to escape from all legal restraint, and any 
hour the whole social fabric may collapse into utter and hope- 
less ruin. It will be well for Americans who desire to pre- 
serve American institutions and American civilization to heed 
this and ponder well on the uncertain and rotten founda- 
tions of social order in Brazil and Cuba, and which, already 
fatally undermined, may at any moment, as has been said, col- 
lapse into a huge mass of free negroism, and thus become a 
portion of that diseased, monstrous, and nameless condition 
which ignorance, and folly, and imposture, and hatred to Amer- 
ican democracy have combined to pervert language as well as 
stultify reason and call freedom. 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 319 

Elsewhere it has been shown that the negro isolated in Af- 
rica is in a natural condition, for he multiplies himself, but that 
he is in his normal, healthy, educated or civilized condition at 
the South, for he then multiplies with vastly greater rapidity 
than in a state of isolation, and consequently, must be more in 
harmony with those fixed and eternal decrees that God has 
ordained for the government of all His creatures. It has also 
been shown that the negro abandoned and left to himself in 
Virginia, etc., dies out, but, of course, less rapidly than at 
the North where the notion prevails that he is the same being 
as themselves, and therefore, in their efforts to make him 
manifest the same qualities, or, in other words, to force on 
him the same " rights," he rapidly tends to extinction. But 
there is still another phase of free negroism vastly more ex- 
tended and more dangerous to republican institutions and the 
future civilization of America. 

The negro is a creature of the tropics, and his labor is 
essential to the cultivation of tropical and tropicoid products, 
which, in turn, are essential to the happiness and well-being of 
all mankind. But, as has been shown, his mental organism ren- 
ders him incapable — as absolutely and inevitably as the physi- 
cal organism of the white man renders him incapable of trop- 
ical production. In the brief space allowed in this work to 
the consideration of this vital and most momentous truth, the 
author could only present a few leading facts in its support, 
but these facts are so overwhelming that no rational or honest 
mind in Christendom will venture to dispute the truth in ques- 
tion. Furthermore it may be stated without chance or possi- 
bility of historical contradiction, that in the entire experience 
of mankind no single instance has ever been known when the 
isolated negro or the labor of the white man has cultivated 
the soil or grown the products of the tropics. The mind of 
the white man and the body of the negro — the intellect of the 



320 THE FUTUEE OP THE NEGRO. 

most elevated and the industrial capacities of the most subor- 
dinate of all the known human races, therefore, constitute the 
elements and motive forces of tropical . civilization. Every 
mind capable of reasoning at all will know that civilization is 
impossible without production, and production in the great 
tropical centre of our continent being forever absolutely and 
necessarily impossible without negro labor guided, controlled, 
and managed by the higher intelligence of the white man — it 
is therefore absolutely certain that the social relation which 
English writers have taught the world to regard as a condi- 
tion of slavery, is simply that social adaptation of the industrial 
forces of the subordinate race, essential, not alone to their 
own welfare but to the welfare of all mankind, and without 
which there can no more exist what we call civilization in a 
large portion of America than there can be life without food 
or light without the sun. This is obvious, and indeed un- 
avoidable to those who are in actual juxtaposition with negroes. 
But in Europe where there are white men only, and where 
negroes, Indians, Malays, etc., are in the popular imagin- 
ation beings like themselves except in the complexion, and 
only need to be civilized, as they suppose, to be like others, it 
was an easy matter to excite a public feeling hostile to the 
prosperity of the people of the tropics. The theory, or rather 
dogma of a single race, that all mankind was a unit, and ne- 
groes, Indians, etc., had a common origin and common nature, 
and therefore common rights, had been set up by English wri- 
ters during the conflict with the American colonies ; and Dr. 
Johnson, w T ith his usual coarseness of expression, had declared 
that " the Virginia slaveholders were the loudest yelpers for 
liberty" — thus, in utter unconsciousness, paying them a com- 
pliment when he believed he was inflicting a sarcasm of pecu- 
liar virulence. 

The doctrine of the Declaration of Independence had reacted 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 321 

in Europe, and the French Revolution, which followed so 
closely on the American, threatened to overthrow the whole 
social fabric in the Old World and to reconstruct its govern- 
ments on the basis of the great American idea promulgated 
by Jefferson. To counteract these tendencies, the English 
statesmen of the day sought to distract the attention of the 
people from their own wrongs to the fancied wrongs of the 
negro — and Wilberforce, Dr. Johnson, and other tory leaders 
and writers, originated that world-wide delusion and imposture 
which, in the name of freedom, has probably done more dam- 
age to freedom than all other influences combined, within the 
last seventy years. The assumption of a single race — that the 
negro was a black-white man, and therefore entitled to all the 
rights of white men, naturally attracted the attention and 
aroused the sympathies of the English masses, and when the 
supposed wrongs of the negro in America were contrasted with 
their own, the latter, doubtless, seemed utterly insignificant in 
comparison. 

The English government, therefore, entered on an "anti- 
slavery" policy, which, beginning with the abrogation of the 
" slave trade" has continued ever since, and though it has im- 
poverished, and, in fact, destroyed some of the finest provinces 
of the British empire, it is as avowed, defined, and ener- 
getic at this moment, perhaps even more so than at any other 
period since it was commenced. Mr. Calhoun and others have 
supposed that the so-called emancipation of negroes in the 
British West India Islands originated in a spirit of commercial 
rivalry, and in order to monopolize tropical production in their 
East Indian possessions that they were willing to sacrifice 
utterly their West Indian colonies. There can be no doubt 
that British statesmen universally believed that the example 
they were about to give us in this respect would be followed 
by universal " emancipation" in the United States, as, indeed, 

14* 



322 THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 

it has been followed by all the European governments owning 
American possessions. But while this was expected by every 
body in England, and thus far may be said to have been the 
prime motive of their action, it is not reasonable to assume 
that British statesmen were prompted by a spirit of commer- 
cial rivalry or believed for a moment that they were concoct- 
ing a grand scheme for securing a monopoly of tropical pro- 
ducts. The policy begun by Pitt forty years previous, naturally 
and necessarily culminated in the "emancipation" of 1832, 
though the desire to neutralize the popular excitement then 
prevailing in respect to parliamentary reform, doubtless 
hastened the action of the government. English statesmen 
may be unable, and probably are unable to explain the motives 
for their " anti-slavery" policy, but they never mistake or fail 
to recognize its vital importance to the preservation of their 
system. Democracy and aristocracy are necessarily antagon- 
istic in all their tendencies, and the progress, strength, and 
extension of the former necessarily involve the downfall and 
destruction of the latter. And, as it is the South — the " slave- 
holders," the States, and the people whose social life rests 
upon natural distinctions that have always struck the dead- 
liest blows at the British system, and, as declared by the old 
tory, Dr. Johnson, eighty years ago, have been the warmest 
supporters of liberty, British statesmen, in their turn, desired 
to break down a condition thus dangerous and thus in conflict 
with their own. 

Indeed, they can not avoid making war upon the social 
order of the South. It is a necessity that exists in the nature 
of things,and springs spontaneously from the circumstances that 
constitute the opposing conditions, and therefore, from 1776 
to 1860 this warfare, openly or secretly, on the battle-field, or 
the still more dangerous arena of public opinion, has been unin- 
terrupted. Their system is based on artificial distinctions — on 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 323 

things of human invention ; ours on natural distinctions — those 
fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty ; and so long as 
England is an American power her policy must be in conflict 
with our own. If it could ever be successful — if the twelve 
millions of negroes on this continent could ever be forced from 
their normal condition of subordination into a legal equality 
with the whites — then it is obvious democratic institutions 
would be rendered impracticable. A simple statement of the 
facts involved would seem to be sufficient to convince every 
American mind not corrupted by British opinions, that the 
British "anti- slavery" policy is part and parcel of the British 
system, and therefore must go on as it has gone on until it 
either overthrows our republican institutions, or England, and 
indeed all other European governments and European influ- 
ences are driven from the New World. The causes of 
West Indian " emancipation," therefore, lie deeper and are far 
wider in their scope, and immeasurably more deadly in their 
consequences than any temporary schemes of commercial 
rivalry, as suggested by Mr. Calhoun, to monopolize tropical 
products. 

They strike at the national life — at the heart of republican- 
ism, at the fundamental principle that underlies our system, at 
the everlasting truth that all who belong to the race are cre- 
ated free and equal ; and should it ever be successful, should 
our people ever become so corrupted in opinion, and so de- 
bauched in their instincts as to assent to the British " anti- 
slavery" policy and " abolish slavery" — distort and transform 
themselves into equality with negroes, then it could not be 
long before the forms as well as the spirit of republicanism 
would disappear from the New World, and whatever might 
happen in the course of centuries, all that Washington and 
Jefferson and the glorious spirits of IT 76 labored for would be 
lost to mankind. 



324 THE FUTURE OP THE NEGRO. 

While British and monarchical writers, therefore, have 
labored to corrupt the nation at the heart — to delude the 
reason and debauch the instincts of our people — to teach them 
that the negro was a man like themselves, and that the instincts 
which God gave them for their guidance in these respects 
were unworthy prejudices — that to retain this inferior and dif- 
ferent being in a subordinate social position corresponding 
with his wants and our own welfare was wrong — an evil, a sin — 
in short, "enslaving him" — while European writers and their 
dupes among us were thus at work corrupting the intellect of 
a great people, the British government have steadily labored 
to reduce their teachings to practice and to " abolish slavery" 
in all their American possessions. It has been estimated that 
something like five hundred millions of money have been ex- 
pended within the last seventy years to carry out the British 
" anti-slavery" policy, to abolish the natural supremacy of the 
white man over the negro, to obliterate the distinctions fixed 
by the Almighty Creator, and equalize those lie has created 
unequal. This vast expenditure is wrong, of course, from the 
toil, and sweat, and misery of the English laboring classes, and 
to pay the annual interest on it every laborer in England is 
compelled to give a certain portion of every day's toil, which 
is thus taken from the mouths of his children to carry on a 
policy at war with liberty in America, but which through the 
monstrous delusions of the day is represented to be the noblest 
philanthropy ! An aristocracy, a class, a mere fraction of the 
people, have laid this enormous burden on their brethren, their 
own race — those whom God created their equals — in order to 
obliterate the distinctions by which the Almighty has separar 
ted white men and negroes; or, in other words, to preserve 
their distinctions — those which they have invented, wmich sep- 
arate themselves from their brethren, the British aristocracy 
have mortgaged the bodies and souls of unborn generations 



THE FUTURE OP THE NEGRO. 325 

of their kind in an impious and fruitless eiFort to destroy the 
distinctions that separate races, and equalize white men and 
negroes in America. The interest for a single year on this 
enormous sum, this mighty burden laid on the working classes 
of England, expended on popular education, would doubtless 
react in a wide-spread revolution and the utter annihilation of 
those who, under the pretence of philanthropy, or of liberating 
negroes in America, have imposed these stupendous burdens 
on the people. 

A few years since, an awful dispensation of Providence in a 
neighboring island swept away in a brief space of time some- 
thing like three millions of people — but, if the annual interest 
paid on the debt contracted under pretence of benefiting 
negroes in America had been applied to the relief of the Irish, 
probably all or nearly all of these unfortunate white people 
might have been saved. Indeed, it is reasonable to suppose 
that, if the money taken from Irish laborers within the last 
seventy years and expended for the assumed benefit of the 
negro had been applied to their relief during the famine in Ire- 
land, few if any would have perished, and that awful calamity 
never would have disfigured the annals of mankind. 

It is the practice of some ignorant and superficial people 
among us to glorify this stupendous misery inflicted on the 
ignorant and helpless of their own race under the pretence of 
benefiting the negro. If it had done so — if, instead of an 
almost equal mischief to the negro, it had done him a bound- 
less good— the crime against their own helpless and miserable 
people — the poor, ignorant, over-worked, and under-fed labor- 
ing millions of their own race; — would still scarcely find its 
parallel in the history of human wrongs. But it inflicted a 
still greater crime on the white people of the islands — for it 
has doomed them to extinction— not absorption by the negro 
blood, as already explained, but entire extinction— that result 



326 THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 

being simply a question of time. Such, briefly considered, 
are the causes and the results, so far as the dominant race are 
concerned, of the British "anti-slavery" policy, which, be- 
ginning in the latter part of the last century, has been steadily 
and vigorously persisted in, and is, probably, in the face of 
all its failures in respect to its avowed objects, more energetic 
and active at this moment than ever before. All the islands 
are now, whether owned by England or other European pow- 
ers, substantially turned over to the negro. The governments 
are simply means for working out this ultimate result. Eng- 
land, for example, sends out to Jamaica a governor, secretary, 
and a few other officials, perhaps to carry on the government of 
that island. The governor probably selects his council from the 
white element, for the reason that the intelligence of the negro 
is incompetent to the functions attached, and in respect to the 
more important official positions generally, they are, from the 
same cause, filled by white men, or by those of predominating 
white blood. But the policy of the government is to place 
power in the hands of the blacks, and therefore all the sub- 
ordinate official positions are filled by these people, as, indeed, 
all the higher and more important places would be if there 
was sufficient intelligence to perforin the functions properly. 

A foreign power — an aristocracy of the Old World — em- 
ploys a machinery, a contrivance, or thing called a govern- 
ment, to exterminate the white population in these islands, 
and to turn them over to the rule of the negro. Under the 
English system, political or official position, unlike ours, carries 
with it social importance, and a negro who is a member of the 
legislature or a magistrate in Jamaica is elevated, in a social 
sense, above the white who holds no official position, no 
matter what his claims may be in other respects. With the 
same legal and political rights, the same schools, and with 
largely predominating numbers, and most of the official posi- 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 327 

tions in their hands, which, under the British system always 
gives social importance, the whole operation of the govern- 
ment is employed to elevate the negro in the social scale, and 
to depress the white man. Of course, intermarriage or affilia- 
tion — that hideous admixture of the blood of different races 
which God has eternally forbidden, and so fearfully punishes 
with extinction — is a direct and necessary consequence of this 
governmental policy. 

A short time since the Queen of England knighted a negro, 
and as this factitious elevation placed him in a social position, 
quite above the untitled white man of Jamaica, the white 
woman of fashion would, doubtless, smother the instincts God 
gave for her guidance, and desecrate her womanhood by an 
alliance with this creature whom God made inferior, but whom 
a woman, four thousand miles distant, was pleased to make 
her equal. The government, therefore — all the governments 
of the British Islands, and, indeed of all other European 
powers, are simply instruments that are employed to elevate 
the negro and to depress the white man to a common level, 
to equalize races, to obliterate distinctions fixed forever by the 
hand of the Almighty, and make the negro the equal of the 
white man. It is no negative or laissez /aire policy — no neutral 
or indifferent desire to apply a theory and leave it to work 
itself out — no mere abstract declaration that all are equal, and 
therefore should be left free to ascend or descend in the social 
scale according to their merits; but, on the contrary, the 
government is an active and all-potent machinery, in constant 
operation to force the negro up, and the white man down, to 
a common level. And it is probable that people in England 
look upon this policy as just and proper. The negroes largely 
predominate in number — why should they not have most of 
the offices ? They have been wronged and oppressed, and are 
without education, and therefore the higher places must be 



328 THE FUTURE OP THE NEGRO. 

filled by white men ; but why should not they enjoy all the 
places they are fit for ? Such, doubtless, is the notion of those 
in Europe, who, utterly ignorant of the negro, suppose him a 
man like themselves, except in his color. But human igno- 
rance and impiety can not change His eternal decrees or 
alter the works of the Almighty. A middle-aged, respectable 
woman in England may " Knight" a negro, and declare that 
she thus makes him superior to the common throng of white 
men, but the black skin, and woolly hair, and flat nose, and 
gross organism, and semi-animal instinct, fixed by the hand 
of the Eternal, remains just the same, unaltered and unalter- 
able forever. All that is possible with the middle-aged woman 
in question, and those who surround her, is to corrupt, to de- 
bauch, to destroy, to exterminate, to murder their own blood, 
to doom the white people of those islands to a fate more 
horrible than the universal slaughter that swept away the 
whites of San Domingo. The process of extinction now 
rapidly destroying the white population of these islands has 
been already considered, but it may be stated again in this 
place, for it involves such tremendous consequences that it 
should be shouted in the ears of the world with the voice of 
an earthquake. The legal and political equality of the negro 
necessarily carries after it social equality wherever they pre- 
dominate in numbers, and when there are no social distinctions 
of race or blood recognized, when that instinct which God 
has given us to protect the integrity of the organism, is de- 
bauched and trampled under foot — when, in short, the " pre- 
judice against color" is lost, then such depraved creatures do 
not hesitate to form those hideous alliances that generate 
mulatto offspring. And when the whole force of govern- 
ment is brought to bear against the " prejudice" that revolts 
at social equality — the hideous affiliation, the monstrous ad- 
mixture of blood, the vile obscenity that they may term 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 329 

marriage, follows with equal certainty. But the result of this 
admixture — the wretched progeny — the diseased and sterile 
offspring — has a determinate limit, and it is solely a question 
of time when it becomes wholly extinct. Any one reflecting 
a moment on this subject — that is, any American whose in- 
stincts are healthy and true — would surely prefer that his 
offspring should perish from the earth rather than to mix 
their blood with that of the negro ; and as the white blood 
in Jamaica, etc., is rapidly mixing with the negro, and with- 
out foreign addition to the white element it must soon be 
universally tainted with the base alloy ; and as all mongrels 
must of necessity ultimately perish, it is certain that the fate 
of the white people of these islands is vastly more deplorable 
than was that of those suddenly swept from existence in the 
Island of Hay ti. 

The policy of England in this respect is universally adopted 
in the other islands. The first step was a war upon the 
u slave trade" — then " emancipation," then the active employ- 
ment of the government to enforce the theory of a single race 
by forcing the negro up and the white man down to an abhor- 
rent, but, of course, impossible level; for those they have 
transformed into a hideous kind of equality must finally perish, 
and in the whole tropical centre of the continent, ultimately 
become extinct. Meanwhile labor, production, and civilization 
are tending to the same common extinction with the white 
blood. In Jamaica, Barbadoes, and some other islands where 
there is yet a considerable white population, the negro, despite 
the influence of the government, is kept in a certain restraint. 
He labors little, it is true, but with little patches of land he 
grows bananas and other products that in that genial clime 
enable him to live in a certain comfort (to him), and thus — 
while the same being would rapidly perish in Massachusetts — 
to multiply himself. The horrible traffic in Mongols or coolies, 



SoO THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 

since the negro was released from labor in the islands, has 
enabled the owners of some of the former flourishing planta- 
tions to continue their cultivation, and to furnish in some places 
almost their former products, and thus to deceive the world 
and to delude those who desire to be deluded in respect to the 
non-productiveness of the free negro. 

But, as has been shown, the negro neither does nor can 
labor, in our sense of the word. His dominating sensualism 
forbids such a thing, while his limited intellect, like that of 
the child, renders him unable to labor for a remote result, or 
deny himself immediate indulgence, in order to acquire an 
ultimate good. In his natural state, and isolated from the 
white man, he calls into exercise his powerful senses for his 
immediate wants, and with no winter or barren seasons to con- 
tend against, and favored with a soil witli its many and nutri- 
tious fruits growing spontaneously all about him, he has little 
more to do than to pluck and eat. In this way he lives, multi- 
plies himself, and enjoys an animal existence, which to us 
seems miserable enough certainly, and, in comparison with his 
condition at the South, is indeed miserable enough ; but to 
this he is rapidly tending in the West Indian Islands, and the 
whole power of the British and other European governments 
are rapidly forcing him into this condition. 

In Hayti he is now nearing this final condition — this inher- 
ent and original Africanism to which he is tending in the whole 
of tropical America. Seventy years ago the mulattoes rebel- 
led against the whites ; they excited and impelled the negroes 
to join them ; the whites — only twenty-five thousand — were 
immolated or driven from the island. Then came the conflict 
among themselves ; the mulattoes and mongrels in turn were 
massacred, or sought shelter in San Domingo, the Spanish part 
of the island, and the negroes, masters of the field, with their 
natural tendencies unchecked, without guides or masters, have 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 331 

finally culminated in Solouque — a typical negro — a serpent 
worshipper and Obi-man, as chief or emperor. 

When the French expedition, under the command of Gene- 
ral Le Clerc, failed to recover the island in 1803, and the 
Haytians, though their independence was not recognized by 
the French republic, were able, through the aid of the British, 
to assume the position of an independent power, they com- 
menced a national existence peculiarly favored in many re- 
spects. The mulattoes — generally the children of French 
masters — were many of them highly educated, having been 
sent to Paris for this purpose in childhood. They had the 
sympathy of the French people, and indeed of the whole world 
on their side, for the worst tyrants and oppressors of Europe, 
while laboring with all their might to crush out the liberty of 
white men, were then as now deeply interested in the freedom 
of the black. Moreover, they had the physical as well as the 
moral support of England, and without a single enemy in the 
world to embarrass their progress. But though without 
foreign enemies or wars of any kind to check their advance, 
with the finest climate and most fertile soil in the world, they 
have rapidly collapsed into their natural Africanism. 

Internal commotions, as now in Mexico, began at once among 
the mongrels, and bloodshed and misery of every kind pre- 
vailed until this element was necessarily destroyed, and the 
stolid, idle, and useless savagism of Africa became the essen- 
tial characteristic of these people. Two causes alone have held 
in check the tendencies to Africanism — the white blood and 
the surrounding civilization. The mongrel element, though 
constantly diminishing in numbers, naturally governed, until it 
became so feeble that Solouque, a typical negro and an embodi- 
ment of Africanism, of fetichism, and a worshiper of Obi, seized 
the supreme power and inaugurated savagism. Accident of 
some kind or other has recently pushed this worthy aside and 



332 THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 

placed one Jeffrard, a griff e, or " colored man," or mulatto, in 
power, Avho calls himself president, but he will doubtless soon 
give place to some negro chief. Nevertheless, there is a con- 
siderable infusion of white blood still in Hayti, and therefore, 
the true negro condition — the natural condition when isola- 
ted, the condition it has always been in and that it always 
must remain in when isolated from the Caucasian man — is not 
yet entirely restored. Again, the surrounding civilization — 
the contact with Europeans and Americans that commerce or 
trade in fruits growing almost spontaneously together, with 
the few adventurous spirits always attracted to such a fertile 
soil as Hayti would, perhaps, always give to its people a some- 
what different external character from the African type. 

But if we can be permitted to suppose the absence of these 
things — the utter extinction of the Caucasian innervation and 
absolute isolation of the negro as in Africa — then, in the trop- 
ics, the same climate with similar soils, in short, similar cir- 
cumstances to those surrounding him in Africa, of course, 
the negro type, the negro nature, the negro being, would be 
the same as it always has been and is now in Africa. On the 
coast, where he is brought in contact with the white man, where 
there are a good many with white blood in their veins, who 
therefore retain to some extent the habitudes of the superior 
race, the traditions and historic recollections of their former 
masters are preserved. But in the interior, where the negro 
is permitted to live out his African tendencies, he has lost all 
knowledge of the events of seventy years ago. History, reli- 
gion, even the French language has disappeared, and in their 
place there is Obiism and African dialects, while probably not 
one in a thousand has any perception, knowledge, or recollec- 
tion whatever of Christophe, Dessali?ies, or others of those no- 
torious chiefs who a little over half a century since filled the 
island with the terror of their names. As observed, the utter 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 333 

extinction of the Caucasian innervation and absolute isola- 
tion of the negro in Hayti, would of necessity end in com- 
plete Africanism, and to this end, this final culmination of 
savagism the whole British aud European policy is now neces- 
sarily tending. It is true, the existence of a white govern- 
ment by mere juxtaposition as well as the prestige of power, 
holds in check the strong tendencies to Africanism, but the 
policy — the official employment of negroes always carrying 
with it under the monarchical regime social importance — tends 
powerfully to degrade the white blood and induce amalgama- 
tion, to drag after it, of course, that inevitable extinction of the 
mongrel progeny which the Almighty has decreed forever and 
everywhere. 

Thus, the British " anti-slavery" policy tends rapidly and 
constantly to the restoration of Africanism, to savagery — to the 
building up of a mighty barbarism hi the very heart of the 
American continent — to the establishment of a huge heathen- 
ism that shall spread itself over fifty degrees of the most fertile 
and beautiful portion of the New World. This, then, is the 
legitimate termination of that wide-spread delusion of modern 
times, which has drawn into its fatal and monstrous embrace 
multitudes of honest and well-meaning men, and while it 
already has worked out evils so stupendous as to be almost be- 
yond our powers of computation to measure them, and never 
in an instance, direct or indirect, done the slightest good what- 
ever, at this moment it threatens to inflict even greater evils on 
the world than those it has hitherto cursed it with. The pro- 
cess through which all this mischief is worked out can not or 
need not be mistaken — a man may run and read it, and though 
a fool understand it. It is this: 1st. The dogma of a single 
race — that the negro is a black-^white man. 2d. The "anti- 
slavery" policy of Pitt, nominally to put down the " slave 
trad< ." 3d. " Emancipation" — and whites and negroes de- 



334 THE FUTUBE OF THE NEGBO. 

clared equal. 4th. The policy of European governments to 
elevate negroes and depress whites, inducing social equality 
and consequent amalgamation. 5th. Absorption of the white 
blood by mongrelism. 6th. Sterility and extinction of the 
mixed element. 7th. Restoration of the African type and 
consequent savagism — a huge heathenism — indeed, Africa itself 
literally lifted up and planted down in the center of the New 
World — thus erecting a mighty barbarism directly in the path 
of American civilization ; and which, in all coming time, as the 
ally or instrument of European monarchists, shall beat back 
the waves of democracy, and dwarf the growth and limit the 
power of the American Republic. 

The " free negro" in our midst perishes ; but in the tropics, 
in his own climate, he poisons and destroys the white blood, 
and then relapses into his inherent and organic Africanism, 
toward which he is rapidly impelled by the British " anti- 
slavery policy." If that policy could ever be successful — if 
fifty degrees of latitude in the heart of this continent should 
ever be permanently turned over to free negroism, or ever 
occupied by a huge barbarism — which should not alone ren- 
der the fairest portion of the New World a barren waste, but 
interrupt that great law of progress which impels us onward, 
to carry our system, our republican idea of government, and 
our civilization, over the whole " boundless continent," then, 
indeed, might the friends of freedom despair of the future. 
But it is not possible that the rising civilization of America 
is to be thus broken down by the monarchists of the Old 
World. The law of progress — of national growth, of very 
necessity — that has carried us to the Gulf of Mexico and to 
the Pacific Ocean, will continue to impel us onward, and to 
restore the rapidly perishing civilization of the great tropical 
center of the continent. All humane and good men desire 
that this grand result shall be worked out by moral causf s 9 by 



THE FUTURE OP THE NEGRO. 335 

the exposure of the monstrous delusion in regard to negroes 
that has been productive of so much evil ; but either through 
an appeal to reason or to the sword — through the operation 
of natural causes or through bloodshed and national suffering 
— the final end must be the restoration of the negro to his 
normal condition, and consequent restoration of civilization in 
the finest portion of our great continent. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

CONCLUSION. 

It has been shown in the foregoing pages of this work how 
that providential arrangement of human affairs, in which the 
negro is placed in natural juxtaposition with the white man, 
has resulted in the freedom of the latter and the general well- 
being of both. It has been seen how a subordinate and 
widely different social element in Virginia and other States, 
naturally gave origin to new ideas and new modes of thought, 
which, thrusting aside the mental habits and political notions 
brought from the Old World, naturally culminated in the 
grand idea of 1776, and the establishment of a new political 
existence, based on the natural, organic, and everlasting equal- 
ity of the race. It has been seen, moreover, how the great 
civil revolution of ,1800, which, under the lead of Mr. Jeffer- 
son, restored the purity and simplicity of republican principles, 
saved the Northern laboring and producing classes from the 
rule of an oligarchy, otherwise unavoidable, however it might 
have been disguised by republican formulas. 

It is scarcely necessary to appeal to the political history of 
the country since 1800 to demonstrate the vital importance — 
indeed, the measureless benefit — of what, by an absurd perver- 
sion of terms, has been called negro slavery, to the freedom, 
progress, and prosperity of the laboring and producing classes 
of the North, and, indeed, to all mankind. It is seen that the 
existence of an inferior race — the presence of a natural sub- 
stratum in the political society of the New World — has resulted 



CONCLUSION. 337 

in the creation of a new political and social order, and relieved 
the producing classes from that abject dej^endence on capital 
which in Europe, and especially in England, renders them 
mere beasts of burthen to a fraction of -their brethren. The 
simple but transcendent fact, that capital and labor are united 
at the South — that the planter, or so-called slaveholder, is, 
per se and of necessity, the defender of the rights of the pro- 
ducing classes — this simple fact is the key to our political his- 
tory, and the hinging-point of our party politics for half a 
century past. 

The Southern planter and Northern farmer — the producing 
classes — a Southern majority and a Northern minority — have 
governed the country, fought all its battles, acquired all its 
territories, and conducted the nation step by step to its pres- 
ent position of strength, power, and grandeur. Just as stead- 
ily a Northern majority and a Southern minority have opposed 
this progress, and labored blindly, doubtless, to return to the 
system of the federalists, indeed to the European idea of class 
distinctions, and to render the government an instrument for 
the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. 

They have sought to create national banks ; demanded favors 
for those engaged in manufactures ; for others engaged in 
Northern fisheries ; for the benefit of bands of jobbers and 
speculators, under pretence of internal improvements ; in short, 
the Northern majority have labored continually to render the 
government, as in England, an instrument for benefiting classes 
at the expense of the great body of the people. 

All these efforts, however, have been defeated by the union 
of Northern and Southern producers, and mainly by the latter. 
A large majority of the votes in Congress against special legis- 
lation and schemes of corruption have been those of so-called 
slaveholders ; and in those extraordinary instances when North- 
ern representatives of agricultural constituencies have proved 

15 



338 CONCLUSION. 

faithless, and these schemes "worked" through Congress, 
" slaveholders" in the Presidential chair have interposed the 
veto, and saved the laboring and producing classes from this 
dangerous legislation, and the government from being per- 
verted into an instrument of mischief. 

Such has been our political and current party history, and 
from the nature and necessities of things, every " extension of 
slavery," or every expansion of territory, must in the future, 
as it has in the past, strengthen the cause of the producing 
classes, and give greater scope and power to the American 
idea of government. 

The acquisition of Louisiana, of Florida, of Texas, etc., of 
those great producing States on the Gulf Coast, has nearly 
overwhelmed the anti-republican tendencies of the North, and 
rendered almost powerless those combinations of capital and 
speculation which have always endangered the purity and sim- 
plicity of our republican system, and thus the rights and safety 
of the laboring and producing millions everywhere. 

Indeed, it is a truth, a simple fact, that can not be too often 
repeated, that in precise proportion to the amount or extent of 
so-called " slaveholding" — of the number of negroes in their 
normal condition — is freedom rendered secure to the white 
millions of the North. And when in the progress of time 
Cuba and Central America, and the whole tropical center of 
the continent is added to the Union and placed in the same 
relation to New York and Ohio that Mississippi, Alabama, 
etc., are now, then it is evident that the democratic or Amer* 
ican idea of government will be securely established forever, 
and the rights and interests of the producing millions who ask 
nothing from government but its protection, will be no longer 
endangered by those anti-republican tendencies which in the 
North have so long conflicted with the natural development 



CONCLUSION. 339 

of our system, and struggled so long and fiercely against its 
existence. 

If this freedom and prosperity of the white man rested on 
wrong or oppression of the negro, then it would be valueless, 
for the Almighty has evidently designed that all His creatures 
should be permitted to live out the life to which He has adapt- 
ed them. But when all the facts are considered, and the 
negro population of the South contrasted with any similar 
number of their race now or at any other time in human ex- 
perience, then it is seen that, relatively considered, they are, 
perhaps, benefited to even a greater extent than the white 
population themselves. 

The efibrts, as has been shown, to reverse the natural order 
of things — to force the negro into the position of the white 
man — are not merely failures, but frightful cruelties — cruelties 
that among ourselves end in the extinction of these poor crea- 
tures, while in the tropics it destroys the white man and 
impels the negro into barbarism. 

In conclusion, therefore, it is clear, or will be clear to every 
mind that grasps the facts of this great question, with the in- 
ductive facts, or the unavoidable inferences that belong to them, 
that any American citizen, party, sect, or class among us, so 
blinded, bewildered, and besotted by foreign theories and false 
mental habits as to labor for negro " freedom" — to drag down 
their own race, or to thrust the negro from his normal condi- 
tion, is alike the enemy of both, a traitor to his blood and at 
war with the decrees of the Eternal. 



THE END. 



OCT1958 



